touchstone file could not be processed in matlab

Hello , I have created a touchstone in cadence virtuoso of two port system(i have renamed it in txt so i could upload it here) but Matlab is not recocnising it.

i tried to import the file into matlab as shown in the code bellow, i get the following error.

Where did i go wrong?

Thanks.

S = sparameters('touchstone_file.s2p');
disp(S)
***************************ERROR MASSAGE********************
S = sparameters('Error using rf.file.touchstone.Data/createoptionlist
Invalid option line for the Touchstone format:
# Hz	S	RI	R	33.755800	50.000000

Error in rf.file.touchstone.Data/read

Error in rf.file.touchstone.Data

Error in rf.internal.netparams.AllParameters/readRFFile

Error in rf.internal.netparams.AllParameters

Error in rf.internal.netparams.ScatteringParameters

Error in sparameters (line 75)
            obj = [e-mail](varargin{:});

[dpb]

Know idea what a Touchstone format valid option line would be, but looking at the Touchstone File Spec document I don't see a case of more than one value for the reference resistance documented...altho can see for a 2-port analyzer needing one for each channel.

Just for grins, try changing that line to

# Hz	S	RI	R	33.755800

and retry to see if works then.

After that, dunno what else to tell you either if it does or doesn't but will be interesting to know result.

<Touchstone_File_Format_Specification_revision_1.1_Draft>

[dpb]

[Answer moved to comment...dpb]

correct its working only for 50 ohm ports.

S = sparameters('spp4');
disp(S);
rfplot(S);

[dpb]

Well, that confirms the suspicion I had from the Standard document -- I don't know whether it is that that link is outdated or whether it is a vendor extension beyond the file spec in the particular instrument you're using.

I don't have necessary toolbox so can't look at the code to see how it is implemented; the format is pretty simple such that if it is m-code it should be pretty easy to create a version that will handle the other inputs.

Or, for just the two-port case, doesn't look like would be very hard to just read the file format directly with low-level i/o functions like textscan and/or fscanf and friends...

Answer 1

[dpb]

For your specific data file in order to not have to modify the file, the following should return the data in usable fashion...

fid=fopen('touchstone_file.txt','r');               % open the file to read the header 
while ~feof(fid)                                    % read by line until find the first option line
  l=fgetl(fid);
  if startsWith(l,'#'),break,end
end
R=str2num(strip(extractAfter(l,['R' char(9)])));    % convert the numeric values after R
while ~feof(fid)                                    % now find beginning of numeric data
  l=fgets(fid);                                     % read line, include \n chars at end 
  if ~startsWith(l,{'#','!'}),break,end             % quit find something other than remark, option
end
fseek(fid,-length(l),0)                             % back up to beginning this line
S=cell2mat(textscan(fid,'','CollectOutput',1));     % read the freq, S data to one array
fid=fclose(fid);                                    % done with the file
clear i;                                            % make sure is imaginary i
% and create a table of frequency and S values...assume complex data
tS=table(S(:,1), S(:,2)+i*S(:,3), S(:,4)+i*S(:,5), S(:,6)+i*S(:,7), S(:,8)+i*S(:,9), ...
                      'VariableNames',{'Freq','S12','S11','S21','S22'});
% or create an sparameter object from the data...
S=sparameters(tS{:,2:end},tS.Freq,R(1));            % use {} to return array from table      

The MATLAB function can only take one R value as discussed elsewhere, though.

For your file and any other of same shape as this one, this returns

>> R
R =
   33.7558   50.0000
>> tS(1:10,:)
ans =
  10×5 table
     Freq             S12                    S11                     S21                    S22       
    _______    __________________    ___________________    _____________________    _________________
      5e+09    0.99984+0.015619i     -0.10198+0.0047799i    3.0572e-05+0.0019382i    0.82423-0.038319i
    5.2e+09    0.99985+0.014558i     -0.10195+0.0050565i    3.4759e-05+0.0020153i    0.82406-0.039836i
    5.4e+09    0.99986+0.01356i      -0.10193+0.0053301i    3.9108e-05+0.0020924i    0.82388-0.04135i 
    5.6e+09    0.99987+0.012617i     -0.10191+0.005601i     4.3621e-05+0.0021696i    0.82369-0.042863i
    5.8e+09    0.99988+0.011723i     -0.10189+0.0058696i    4.8299e-05+0.0022468i     0.8235-0.044374i
      6e+09    0.99988+0.010873i     -0.10187+0.0061361i     5.314e-05+0.002324i      0.8233-0.045882i
    6.2e+09    0.99989+0.010063i     -0.10186+0.0064007i    5.8145e-05+0.0024013i     0.8231-0.047389i
    6.4e+09    0.99989+0.0092902i    -0.10184+0.0066635i    6.3315e-05+0.0024787i    0.82289-0.048893i
    6.6e+09    0.99989+0.0085497i    -0.10183+0.0069249i    6.8649e-05+0.002556i     0.82267-0.050396i
    6.8e+09    0.99989+0.0078391i    -0.10182+0.0071848i    7.4147e-05+0.0026334i    0.82245-0.051896i
>> 

I presume if there's more to the struct sparamteters creates in using builtin methods there's probably a way to stuff these data into it...altho you may run into a limitation that it doesn't know how to handle the R array, either.

ADDENDUM:

The information for the sparameters function includes the optional form:

"sobj = sparameters(data,freq, Z0) creates an S-parameter object from the S-parameter data, data, and frequencies, freq, with a given reference impedance Z0."

Unfortunately, it also states that the Z0 reference impedance is only a single reference value, not one per channel.

So,

S=sparameters(tS{:,2:end},tS.Freq,R(1));

should give you a compatible object but with the limitation of only one reference R. But, that's going to be a limitation on everything the whole suite does with the object.

I suppose one could incorporate the two values in the calculation of the returned results into the scaling of the various product terms and then use a reference of 1 for the object parameter.

Or, alternatively scale the return channel data from other than 50 (say) to 50 as if both channels used 50 (or vice versa to use other channel reference). Same idea.

As noted in the Comment below, this seems a real shortcoming in the implementation worthy of support request.

[fima v]

rftoolbox s-param functions are compatible with the tS object you created?

[dpb]

As is, undoubtedly not...that's a MATLAB table; I have no idea what the RF Toolbox object structure is...

The idea was to read the data and hopefully you could figure out how to put in into the form...I don't have the TB.

BTW, I see I missed a couple steps when pasted stuff from command history into answer...it should work as advertised now...didn't actually read the S data as was, having left out a line.

[dpb]

Seems that the problem should be worthy of a bug report/enhancement request to the official TMW support.

I "know nuthink!" about the subject nor the toolboxes so as outlined above don't know whether the problem is one that the given file is vendor-specific extension or the Matlab support functions and the spec I found are not up to date.

Answer 2

[Mark]

Now that RF Toolbox is using the official Touchstone 2.0 reader, the following works.

S = sparameters('touchstone_file.txt')