Precision Printed Circuit Board Probing Into W-Band

Performing accurate measurements of surface-mount components using printed circuit boards (PCBs) is not trivial when extending to frequencies as high as 110 GHz. To obtain accurate measurement results for these scenarios, several factors must be considered. These factors include proper calibration techniques, choosing a suitable PCB material, and PCB fabrication tolerances, among others. This paper demonstrates how successful mm-wave measurements can be performed with softboard PCBs by utilizing a multi-line thru-reflect-line (mTRL) calibration. A commercially available PCB material is used for all characterizations. Measurements are shown to yield high quality S-parameter results for several device test cases.