| Emerging electronic devices have been developed to support higher data rates and bandwidths. Such devices require thorough characterization, during both design and fabrication. Unfortunately, many current test methods rely on narrowband measurements. In this research, a sophisticated digital signal processing technique is used in a vector network analyzer (VNA) to accommodate so-called modulated scattering parameters and time domain waveforms. The distinctive innovation is to determine time domain representations of the incident waveform, the reflected waveform, and the transmitted waveform at the device under test (DUT) terminals, which will later be used to determine the DUT frequency response. In order to find the time domain waveforms and DUT response, a de-embedding technique is performed to eliminate the effects of all fixtures located between the VNA and the DUT. This dissertation presents the theoretical analysis of the VNA measurement system, as well as the simulation of uncertainty of the error adapter, the impact of the additive white Gaussian measurement noise and quantization, and the effects of bandwidth limitations of the VNA system. Additionally incident and reflected DUT waveforms are de-embedded and the RMS error is calculated. The results show that error adapter parameter uncertainties less than 10% yield RMS errors less than 0.1 dB. The error floor due to noise is approached when the system is operated at SNRs above 30 dB. Quantizers employing at least 14 bits provide sufficient measurement accuracy. |
