Radiofrequency Voltage Measurements

In the alternate voltage field at INRiM, the italian NMI, the reference voltage standard under 1 MHz is maintained in terms of AC-DC Transfer Difference. On the other hand, over 10 MHz, the meaningful quantity is the electrical power which is always definable: for this reason the reference standard is maintained through the microcalorimetric technique. However, a gap exists between 1 MHz and 10 MHz in which no reference standard is defined, at least at INRiM. In the past this situation was not a problem, but recently an increasing demand for calibration over 1 MHz in terms of voltage and under 10 MHz in terms of power required to fill the existing metrological gap. Since the microcalorimetric technique is not further downward extensible, due to the fact that all the technical solutions adopted are at the state of the art, an alternative way must be found to fill the gap. The proposal is to extend the voltage measurements above the limit of 1 MHz, technique already adopted in other metrological institutes, that is to extend the AC-DC Transfer Difference Standard. On the other hand a new procedure will be proposed to derive power measurements from the same voltage set-up.

Autorentext

Dr. Marco Sellone reached his Ph.D. in Metrology from Politecnico di Torino in 2009. Since 2005 he has been working at INRIM - Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Turin, the italian NMI. His main fields of interest are the Radio Frequency Power and Impedance measurements, mainly regarding Scattering Parameters using Vector Network Analyzers.