UNKNOWN THRU is used in full two-, three-, and four-port calibration. The calibration type with an UNKNOWN THRU is called SOLR, which refers to Short, Open, Load, Reciprocal.
Any arbitrary reciprocal two-port device with unknown parameters can be used as an UNKNOWN THRU.
There are two basic requirements to the UNKNOWN THRU:
•The first requirement applies to the transmission coefficient of the THRU. It should satisfy the reciprocity condition (S21 = S12), which holds for almost any passive network. Do not use a THRU with a loss higher than 20 dB, as it can reduce the calibration accuracy.
•The second requirement is knowledge of the approximate electrical length of the UNKNOWN THRU within an accuracy of 1/4 of the wavelength at the maximum calibration frequency. This requirement, however, can be omitted if the following frequency step size condition is met:
,
where is a delay of reciprocal two-port device.
In this case, the VNA software can automatically determine electrical length (delay) of a reciprocal two-port device.
A thru, implemented inside the Module using an electronic switch, features loss. Make sure the exact thru parameters are known, or use an UNKNOWN THRU algorithm to obtain the required calibration accuracy.
The Module allows the use of both variants. Its memory stores S-parameters of the thru, which are used for calculation of calibration coefficients. The above parameters are not used if the UNKNOWN THRU algorithm is applied.
