Power Meter

The Power Meter is a wideband receiver used to perform scalar measurements and absolute amplitude calibration in the VNA based measurements setup.



When clicking on the “Power Meter” picture, the following menu appears on the right side of the schematic editor:



Instrument

  • Driver: select the appropriate driver corresponding to the instrument (refer to Supported Power Meters list)
  • Address: set the communication address. Note the icon can be use to open the Instrument Scanner
  • Options: set specific driver options by clicking on icon (refer to Supported Instruments section)
  • VISA Library: set the VISA Library (*.dll) used to communicate with the instrument (see help on this page: Getting Started : "Configure the VISA Library on the control PC")
  • Command Time Out (ms): elapsed time before returning an error message if no response from the instrument
  • Command Delay (ms): delay before sending a command to the instrument

General

  • Mode: choose the measurement mode (CW or Pulsed)
  • Channel: select the channel (for a single-channel power meter select 'Channel 1')
  • Power limit: set the power limit of the power sensor to prevent any damage. IQSTAR will stop automatically the measurement or calibration process if the power value read by the power meter is higher than this value
  • Averaging: set the averaging.

Attenuator Offset

  • Fixed Offset: set an offset if an attenuator/adaptor is added to the power sensor. This setting can also be used to calculate a peak power using an average power sensor.
  • Use File: select to use a *.S2P file as an attenuator offset
  • File Offset: select the *.S2P file corresponding to the attenuator/adaptor added to the power sensor clicking on the icon or selecting a file included in the Files manager of IQSTAR through the icon
    Note: *.S2P file can be plotted using icon.
  • Swap File: select to swap [S11] and [S22] in the *.S2P file
  • Interpolate File: select to interpolate values during measurement/calibration

Measurement Window (available only in Pulsed mode)

  • Delay: set the measurement window delay.
  • Width: set the measurement window width.
Note: These timings can be re-adjusted in the 'Chronograms' tab.

Trigger (available only in Pulsed mode)

Select the Internal or External Positive/Negative Edge Trigger. Typically, the power meter is externally triggered and the same window as the RF source is used for the measurement.