Retrieving Quality Factors for Reflection & Transmission Measurements

TL;DR

This paper explains how to determine the quality factors of microwave resonators from reflection and transmission measurements, providing pedagogical insights and MATLAB code for practical calculations.

Contribution

It offers a clear pedagogical explanation and practical MATLAB tools for extracting resonance quality factors from microwave measurement data.

Findings

Method for extracting Q factors from measurements explained

MATLAB code available for direct calculation

Applicable to microwave resonator analysis

Abstract

This article presents pedagogical explanation of retrieving the resonance parameters $Q_{L}$, $Q_{o}$ and $Q_{c}$ from both reflection and transmission measurement of microwave resonator. Here $Q_{L}$ stands for the total or loaded quality factor (Q), $Q_{o}$ is the internal Q and $Q_{c}$ is the coupling or external Q. Matlab Code based on the methods is available for download for direct calculation of the Qs.\cite{lighq}