Network-assisted procedure for impedance dissemination

A technique for disseminating impedance measurement units from National Metrology Institutes to secondary laboratories is proposed in this paper. Such a technique takes advantage of a client-server application over the Internet and employs a commercially available impedance calibrator with computer-interfacing capabilities. The calibrator, which is employed as a travelling standard, is sent to the secondary laboratory, where the traceability transfer process toward a digital impedance meter is performed. Such a process is remotely managed through the Internet by the National Metrology Institute, which acquires the measurement results and issues the calibration certificate of the impedance meter. The proposed solution allows the impedance dissemination process to be largely simplified with respect to the traditional calibration technique, so that the traceability-maintenance cost a secondary laboratory has to sustain is drastically reduced. The architecture of the developed client-server application over the Internet is described in the paper and preliminary results that are related to the characterization of the employed travelling standard are reported.