Analysis and experiment of temperature effect on the thermoelectric power sensor

•A numerical model is established to describe the effect of temperature on the thermoelectric power sensor.•The experiments of the temperature effect on the thermoelectric power sensor are performed and compared with the proposed numerical model.•The calibration and compensation of the power sensor is performed and the output voltage does not change with the surrounding temperature any longer.

In this paper, a numerical model is established to describe the effect of temperature on the packaged thermoelectric power sensor in different environments. The thermal conductivity of the GaAs substrate and the Seebeck coefficient of the thermopiles both change with the surrounding temperature and then influence the output voltage of the sensor. The return loss of the packaged power sensor is measured to be −20 dB at 10 GHz and close to −12 dB at the edge of X-band. The temperature experiment is performed from 273 K to 363 K in the temperature chamber. An agreement between the measured results and the presented model is obtained and the temperature dependence factor is close to 0.15 mV/K at 10 GHz under the incident power of 50mW. Furthermore, calibration of the output voltage is accomplished from 273 K to 363 K and the compensated power with respect to the surrounding temperature is also recorded under 50mW.