The course consists of lectures and hand-on laboratories. Topics of lectures include

• Microwave Measurements in the time and frequency domains, basics of spectrum analyzers, vector signal analyzers, and time domain reflectometer
• Transmission lines, complex impedance, reflection coefficients
• Microwave measurements with a Vector Network Analyzer, basics of vector network analyzers
• Microwave components and devices, splitters, circulators, directional couplers, filters, etc.
• Beam signals for Circular Accelerators, beam spectrums, power spectral density, betatron and synchrotron signals
• Signals, noise, and dynamic range, basic noise performance of devices and systems
• Impedance matching, basic of matching devices
• RF cavity measurements, cavity basics, bead pull, coupling, cavity bandwidth

Hand-on labs include:

• Spectrum Analyzer:

  Measurement of simple signals on a spectrum analyzer to understand resolution bandwidth, video bandwidth, dynamic range, noise, etc.
• TDR:

  Measurement of characteristics of various connector families, transmission lines, complex loads.
• Components:

  Measurement of the s-parameters of a variety of microwave components.
• Beam Signals:

  Utilize an arbitrary function generator to simulate beam signals from the accelerator, AM for betatron signals, FM for synchrotron signals.
• Noise:

  Consists of measuring the noise performance of a microwave amplifier. The amplifier will then be part of a "system" and noise performance of the system will be compared to individual noise performance of the components.
• Matching:

  Design and build a simple single stub transmission line matching circuit.
• RF Cavities:

  Measure mode spectrums of a cavity, the cavity coupling, loaded and unloaded Q, the electric field profile and R/Q of a cavity by the bead pull method.
• Vector Signal Analyzer:

  Use of a vector signal analyzer for measuring Am and FM modulation.
• Waveguides:

  Measurements with LRL 550B Microwave Student Lab.
• Mixers:

  Measurements with double balanced mixers, linearity, conversion loss, intermodulation products.

Prerequisites: Undergraduate Electromagnetism