With the migration of communication systems to higher frequencies, signal integrity plays an increasingly significant role in the design process. This in turn puts more demand on the test and measurement systems with improved capabilities. For a manufacturer of RF connectors and cable assemblies, a thorough understanding of electromagnetic phenomena is critical to establishing design rules to eliminate adverse effects. Return loss, insertion loss and the time domain behaviour of these products have to be kept under control from design, production, and assembly to final testing.
Increasingly, it is not seen as being sufficient for companies to use calibrated vector network analyzers and calibration kits for final testing to run an effective and high quality production line. The knowledge of negative effects that can arise in a production and assembly line needs to be shared with all relevant departments and subsidiaries. From this premise the idea was born to design an educational RF training kit for company internal purposes with devices that clearly and purely demonstrate the single effects supported by tutorials. However, this educational kit is not only available for internal use but also for academic and industrial customers