Recommended Practices for Calibrated Millimeter-Wave Modulated-Signal Measurements

In this paper, we have demonstrated the importance of choosing the correct reference plane for applications such as over-the-air (OTA) modulated-signal measurements at millimeter-wave frequencies. We have employed a modulated-signal source at 44 GHz for this demonstration. The measurements have been performed using NIST's calibrated sampling oscilloscope and are traceable to the primary standards. The EVM values and distributions are obtained after complete uncertainty analyses. The source and oscilloscope mismatch measurements have been performed on a vector network analyzer (VNA) and are also shown here after complete uncertainty analyses. Each dataset shown in the paper has been obtained after running 1000 Monte-Carlo simulations.