VNA file conversion from .s2p to cti file

[hutch]

I have an N5521A that i have been using for making measurements on waveguide. I output .cti files from it and then files are imported into a complex Excel spreadsheet. I would like to upgrade to the N9913A FieldFox, but it does not output .cti files ( it does .s2p and .csv ). I talked to an Agilent Tech support guy and he indicated that other engineers have written conversion routines to convert back and forth. I searched around and have not found any. Anyone in this group have a program or macro that can perform this conversion?
Thanks in advance,
Hutch

[Matt-Bob]

Hello Hutch,

Could please explain what National Instruments products you are using? My understanding is that the N5521A is an adaptor, not a VNA, and both it and the N9913A FieldFox are Agilent products. Is your current VNA from NI? 

[hutch]

sorry for the typo , VNA is N5221A.  I am using Labview 2010.

[Andy_Hinde]

Hi Hutch,

The N5221A is an Agilent PNA network analyzer, their high-end line of analyzers. As such, it apparently can output data in Touchstone (.SnP), citifile (.cti), and .prn format.

http://na.tm.agilent.com/pna/help/WebHelp7_5/S5_Output/SaveRecall.htm#prn

The FieldFox is a lower-end analyzer and apaprently, from your earlier posts, outputs data in .SnP and .CSV format, and not .cti.

National Instruments VNAs output data in .SnP and .TXT file formats, and I am unaware of any conversion utilities for .cti files. Agilent suppot should provide this capability to you in my personal opinion, but in actuality it appears it would be realtively strightforward to create a utility like this as the .cti file is ASCII-based, as is SnP.

Sorry we don't have anything for you that is ready to go, but if you can press Agilent support for some more help in locating a utility for their file formats, we can work with you to wrap it up and support it in LabVIEW if it is not LabVIEW-based already.

Regards,

Andy Hinde

Senior Systems Engineer

RF and Communications

National Instruments

[hutch]

Thanks,

After some diligent hunting on the web, I found a nice tool (VNA toolsII) that can do the conversion,

http://www.metas.ch/metasweb/Fachbereiche/Elektrizitaet/HF/VNATools/VNATools.html

It was originally  written using LabVIEW in 1998, but rewritten using #C in 2008. i did not see any source code available for it.

Regards,

Hutch

[Andy_Hinde]

Hi Hutch,

I did some digging and found something for you in LabVIEW format.

It is a set of VIs for general HF network analysis, but included in it are some VIs for reading/writing both .snp and .cti files. Look in the Data subfolder.

You can use the blocks in this to read a .snp file and save it as .cti files. There's no example specificaly for this already written, so you'll have to build one from the blocks provided.

If you unzip the attached file, and copy the contents to you <LabVIEW>\vi.lib\addons directory, these should show up in your LabVIEW 2010 pallete. They were written in LabVIEW 2012 format but I saved them down to LabVIEW 2010 so hopefully it works.

Regards,

Andy Hinde

Senior Systems Engineer

RF and Communications

National Instruments

[hutch]

thanks I'll take a look

[keilboring123234]

Did you ever figure this out. I need to do the same thing. I installed High Frequecny Network Anaylysis libary from here https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-43062  because @Andy_Hinde download that was posted I would get some missing SubVI's. 

I think @Andy Hinde had the right idea with HF Network Anaylysis libary. The package can open/save both cti and .s2p files but i cant figure out how to convert them.

Any help would be great.

Thanks

[hutch]

Here is a great find for you RF types

http://www.metas.ch/metas/en/home/fabe/hochfrequenz/vna-tools.html

VNA tools II from Federal Institute of Metrology METAS (near Bern Switzerland) will view and convert .sp2 and .cti

Enjoy