It has been more than 2 years since the first launch of our FILPAL Touchstone Viewer (Free & PRO). Thanks to the support of our users in the RF community, we have more than 4000 downloads around the globe. To continue the enhancement of features and users’ experiences, 13 patches are released throughout this period. In this article, we will guide you through all the newly added key features to help you in SNP file analysis.
Fast Mode
Since the beginning, our viewer is able to support high numbers of ports (>60 ports) and large-sized (>200MB) SNP files. Over the years, we keep pushing to improve the plotting speed. Now, it is at least 50% faster since the first launch. Recently, we pushed the speed further by introducing Fast Mode. By disabling the conversion to Z-parameter and Y-parameter, the loading time was reduced by another 30%. Based on the feedback and requests of users, we believe that this feature is very useful for users in the integrated circuit (IC) design field.
More Parameters & More Formats
We noticed that there are more useful parameters that can be added to help users in amplifier or other active component designs. Hence, we added Unwrapped Phase, VSWR, Gain, and K-factor. Without the need of using an RF calculator, our application is able to help you calculate and plot the S2P data into specific formats that you want.
Overlay Multiple Charts
In order to allow our users to view multiple charts from multiple files at the same time, the Overlay Charts feature is developed for our Touchstone Viewer PRO. Users can open as many touchstone files as they want. The line trace of the chart can be toggled on and off by using the checkbox below the chart. In the feedback we received, our users mentioned that this feature helps them to compare and validate their measurement or simulation files based on the reference results.
Connect VNA
Other than the features mentioned above, the Connect Feature is also one of the newly introduced features in 2021. With the help of this function, users are able to export SNP files directly from VNA using an SCPI connection. There is another article that covered the knowledge about SCPI and VNA connect function. We also have a video on how to utilize this cool new feature.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, we will continue to develop a better and faster touchstone viewer for the RF community around the world. We really appreciate all the feedback that you provided to us. There are more features that we are not able to cover such as the smith chart feature. But check out about it in our website. It is FREE anyway!
Originally published at http://filpal.wordpress.com on August 21, 2022.
