RFdude.com Smith Chart Program
Note: the return loss, mismatch loss and VSWR don't calculate properly in some cases, and the terminology I've used is somewhat confusing (I know) -- please excuse these quirks. I'm working on them every once in a long while as I have time. The impedance calculations are accurate as far as I know.
0.810 (Bug Fix release)
6/16/2007: Olli found a bug in the calculation of mismatch loss and VSWR in complex source (?) cases. Please give this a try. This should be 100% file compatible with 0.805.
Pleaselet me know if you have problems installing this with the setup.exe included in the zipfile. I have had a lot of trouble getting this to work right on my PC's at home, but it has now been tested on several machines running win2k (2) , XP (3), and vista(1)... and seems to work. This file is much bigger as it includes the visual C++ 2005 runtime libraries/prerequisites.... that seemed to be the closest to "foolproof" as I could come. Some early attempts would install fine, but would throw up errors when you tried to run them. Thank you for your feedback as always.
5/31/2007 Note: ML (mismatch loss) is only calculated based on reflection coefficient, it is not equal to insertion loss for lossy networks. This was brought up by a user and is worth clarifying (thanks to Olli-Pekka Lundén from Tampere University of Technology (TUT)). This has always worked this way -- nothing new, but again... worth clarifying. I do not report "loss" or "insertion loss" in the program.
Older Versions
Version 0.805 Download (~500k) -- docs not up to date, has "F1/F2/F3" update -- see setup dialog and use function keys F1-3. THIS VERSION WAS NOT TESTED THAT CAREFULLY, LL 2/8/2006
Version 0.803 Download (~500k) -- 9/9/2003 - fixed a big bug (typo) in previous versions... apparently previous Microsoft complier versions tolerated this (?)
Version 0.801 Download (~500k)
Other
- See the included documentation (PDF)
- Thanks to Peter White (www.radio-labs.com) and Paul Ruhland for providing some Windows/Visual C++ tips that were very helpful. Also -- some good stuff was found at www.codeguru.com that helped at different times.
Thanks! to those of you have provided feedback, it has been appreciated. Please continue and send it to this address:
Known Bugs (send yours in if you really do have *bugs*)
- Extreme impedances (really extreme) will cause the plotting routines to blow chunks. Hopefully this doesn't annoy anyone too much.
- Really small windows (manually sized) -- not sure if this is still a problem or not. (you will break it if you make the window so small it is useless).