#TMCGROTS
!Graphics parameters
!Graphics data
!file name : E:\BackUP\ARHIV\WORK\Source\SAMPLE_R\ABSORBER\poly.tos
!Data file for draw graphics
!TFileName GraphicsName DrawFlag Input1 Mod1 Input2 Mod2
poly.t poly.t 1 1 1 1 1

!TFileName GraphicsName DrawFlag Input1 Mod1 Input2 Mod2
poly.t     poly.t       1        1      1    1      1

#TMC_GraphicsOutputSignalFile FormVer2.0 2000
!File name E:\BackUP\ARHIV\WORK\Source\SAMPLE_R\ABSORBER\poly.t
#TMC_GROTS_Freq 1e+010
#TMC_GROTS_InpNum -2
!nT nBlock  Up  Uo
        0              0   7              0              0   8              0              0
        1  4.717309e-012   7      0.2920765    -0.05489582   8              0              0
        2  9.434617e-012   7      0.5586809     0.03530808   8              0              0
        ...

        1  4.717309e-012   7      0.2920765    -0.05489582   8              0              0

User manual — the TMCROS program (TMCROS.exe)

TMC Suite package. This manual is written in plain language and is intended for a user seeing the program for the first time. All menu and button names are given as they appear in the program (the interface is in English), with a translation and explanation next to them.

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1. Purpose of the program

TMCROS (the full name in the window title is Tamic Rt Output Signal Viewer) is a program for viewing time signals. In simple terms, it builds graphs where:

• the horizontal axis (X) shows time — in samples (point numbers) or in seconds and fractions of them (ms, µs, ns, ps);
• the vertical axis (Y) shows the signal in time or a quantity computed from it — the amplitude envelope, the phase (in radians or degrees), the VSWR, or the losses in decibels.

Where do these signals come from? They are computed by the package's compute kernels — tmc_rth (H-polarization) and tmc_rtx (X-mode). When computing a planar structure, a kernel can save the time signal of a multiport — how the response changes over time at each port (input). TMCROS reads this signal from a .t file and shows it as a clear graph.

What the program can do:

• open ready-made graph documents (.tos files) or time-signal files (.t) directly;
• show several curves at once on one field (for example, signals from different inputs or from different files);
• change the scale (zoom in/out, auto-fit by axes), shift the visible area;
• configure the colors of the background, grid, axes and the curves themselves, as well as the label font;
• print the graph and save the display settings in the .tos document itself;
• the main feature — transform a time signal back into a scattering matrix (S-matrix) at given frequencies. This function is called To S-matrix (the "time → S-matrix" subsystem, TtoS) and is described in section 6.7.

How does TMCROS differ from the "neighboring" program TMCGROUT? TMCGROUT shows frequency characteristics (the S-matrix as a function of frequency), whereas TMCROS shows time signals. Outwardly they are very similar (built to the same design), so their menus and buttons are almost identical. But TMCROS can additionally reconstruct the S-matrix from a signal — TMCGROUT cannot.

Note: TMCROS only displays and transforms already-computed data. The computation of the signal itself is performed by the compute kernels (tmc_rth, tmc_rtx). How to obtain a .t file is described in section 7.

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2. Launching and opening data

How to launch the program

1. Find the file TMCROS.exe (after the build it is in dist/win32/bin or dist/win64/bin).
2. Launch it with a double click.
3. On the first launch the program maximizes to full screen. If any files were opened before, TMCROS will try to automatically open the last of them (the "recent files" list is stored in the Windows registry under TMCROS).

Which file to open

TMCROS works with two file types (details in section 7):

To open a file:

1. Menu File → Open…, or click the "Open" button on the toolbar, or press Ctrl+O.
2. In the dialog select the desired .tos or .t file.
3. The signal graph appears in the document window.

If you open a .t file, a document will be created next to it (it stores the display settings). In the future it is more convenient to open the document.

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3. The main window

The main window is a multiple-document window (MDI): several windows with different graphs can be open inside it at once.

The window consists of four zones:

1. Menu bar (top) — all program commands, grouped into sections (File, Edit, View, Config, Window, Help). Details in section 5.
2. Toolbar — a row of icon buttons for the most frequent actions. Details in section 4.
3. Graph area (center) — here the axes, the coordinate grid and the signal curves themselves are drawn. The mouse works over this area: you can select a rectangle to zoom in, and a double click fits the scale.
4. Status bar (bottom) — two panels: - the left one — the coordinates of the point under the mouse cursor (the time value on X and the signal value on Y); - the right one — service information about the current graph (the type of characteristic plotted on the Y axis: signal, amplitude, phase, VSWR or losses).

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4. The toolbar

The toolbar duplicates the most frequent menu commands as buttons. If the toolbar is not visible, enable it via View → Toolbar.

The buttons go from left to right. Below is the purpose of each. The list and order are taken from the program resource (IDR_MAINFRAME TOOLBAR in the file src/viewers/Tmcrtout/TMCGROUT.rc), and the explanations from the hint table (STRINGTABLE) of the same file. The thin vertical gaps on the toolbar are separators (SEPARATOR); they group the buttons by meaning.

A note about the "P" and "V" buttons. In an initial inspection of the toolbar in the screenshot toolbar.png, some icons were marked by the observer as "P" (presumed button #3) and "V" (presumed button #5) with an unclear purpose. However, the program resource (the IDR_MAINFRAME TOOLBAR section) does not contain separate buttons with such commands: it lists exactly the 24 commands given in the table above. Most likely "P" is the icon of the Characteristics button (ID_EDIT_DOCUMENT, #3), and "V" is the icon of the Viewport button (ID_EDIT_GRAPHICSPARAMETERS, #5); the letters on the icons are merely stylized pictograms, not separate functions.

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5. The menus

Below, every item of every menu is explained: what it does, its keyboard shortcut, and what happens after you select it. The structure is taken from the menu resource IDR_TMCGROTYPE (the menu with a document open).

5.1. The File menu

When saving, the display settings (colors, font, line types) are additionally remembered in the Windows registry and used as defaults for new documents.

5.2. The Edit menu

"Inputs" and "modes" (Input1/Mod1, Input2/Mod2) are the address of a column in the signal file: which input (port) with which component to show. Details in section 7.

5.3. The View menu

The View → Zoom submenu

With auto-scale enabled on an axis, the program fits the limits to the minimum/maximum of the data itself, and manual limits on that axis are ignored (the Xmin/Xmax or Ymin/Ymax fields in the Viewport dialog become unavailable).

The View → Translate submenu

Shifting is convenient when you need to "scroll" the graph left/right/up/down without changing the scale. The shift step is about 10% of the current range.

5.4. The Config menu

The Config → Color submenu

The Graphics item opens a table of 16 line samples. By clicking the desired sample, you choose the color, the style (Solid, Dash, Dot, DashDot, DashDotDot) and the thickness of that line.

5.5. The Window menu

5.6. The Help menu

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6. Typical workflows

Below are step-by-step instructions for the most frequent tasks.

6.1. Open a .tos document

1. Menu File → Open… (or Ctrl+O, or the "Open" button on the toolbar).
2. Select a file with the .tos extension (for example, poly.tos).
3. The signal graph is built automatically. If the curve has "run off" beyond the window, press the auto-scale buttons Auto X size and Auto Y size.

6.2. Open a "raw" signal .t

1. Menu File → Open… (Ctrl+O).
2. In the dialog select a file with the .t extension (for example, poly.t).
3. The program reads the signal and builds the graph; a document to store the display settings is created next to it. Save it (File → Save, Ctrl+S) so that next time you open the ready document.

6.3. Add another characteristic (Add characteristics)

1. Open a document (see 6.1).
2. Menu Edit → Add characteristics (Ctrl+A) or the "Add characteristic" button.
3. In the dialog select the desired .t file.
4. The new curve is added to the document. To view/configure the list of all curves, open Edit → Characteristics (Ctrl+D).
5. In the table you can turn the display of each curve on and off (the output flag), and set the input/mode of the desired signal column.

6.4. Adjust the scale (Zoom / Auto X / Auto Y)

There are three ways to change the scale:

• With the mouse — hold the left button and draw a rectangle around the graph area of interest; when you release the button the program zooms in on the selection. A double click in the graph area fits the scale back.
• With the toolbar buttons — Zoom + / Zoom − (both axes), Zoom +X/−X, Zoom +Y/−Y (one axis).
• Auto-scale — View → Zoom → Auto X size (Alt+X) and Auto Y size (Alt+Y). The program fits the limits so that the whole curve is visible. This is the fastest way to "fit" the graph into the window.

6.5. Shift the graph (Translate)

1. Menu View → Translate.
2. Select Change Xmax, Xmin (shift along time) or Change Ymax, Ymin (shift vertically).
3. In the nested submenu, choose Decrement or Increment (or the arrow keys). To jump to the start/end of the time range, use Home/End.

The same effect is produced by the shift buttons on the toolbar (#17–22).

The shift only works with auto-scale disabled on the corresponding axis: with auto-scale enabled, the limits are determined automatically from the data.

6.6. Change the colors and the characteristic type

Background / grid / axes / point color: 1. Menu Config → Color → Background / Grid / Axies / Point. 2. In the standard dialog select the color → OK.

Curve color, style and thickness: 1. Menu Config → Color → Graphics. 2. In the opened table click the sample of the desired curve. 3. Select the color, the line style (Solid/Dash/Dot/DashDot/DashDotDot) and the thickness → OK.

What is plotted on the Y axis and the X-axis units (time): 1. Menu View → Viewport (Ctrl+H) or the "Window parameters" button. 2. In the dialog select the Y characteristic type (Signal, Amplitude, WSVR, L dB, Phase rad, Phase grad) and the X-axis unit (nT — samples, or ps/ns/µs/ms/s), optionally set the limits and the label format → OK.

6.7. Reconstruct the S-matrix from a signal (To S-matrix)

This is the main, distinguishing TMCROS function. It takes one or more time signals (.t) and computes from them a scattering matrix at given frequencies, saving the result into an S-matrix file (.s). The resulting .s file can then be opened in TMCGROUT and viewed as an ordinary frequency response.

The idea of the method (briefly). The time signal at each input is considered a harmonic oscillation s(t) = A·sin(ω·t + φ) at a given frequency. From adjacent signal samples the program reconstructs the amplitude A and the phase φ — that is, the complex value of the S-matrix element — and averages the result over the selected time range. The input on which there is a signal (the excited input) determines the row of the S-matrix.

Step by step:

1. Open a document with a signal (.tos) or the .t file itself.
2. Menu Edit → To S-matrix (Alt+T) or the "To S-matrix" button on the toolbar.
3. The conversion dialog opens (see the figure below). In it:

• a list of input .t files (up to 20) with a "process" checkbox for each. Use the Add button to add the desired signal files;
• the output .s-file field — the name of the result; by default it is <document name>.s. You can change it with the Change button, and delete the file from disk with the Delete button;
• the frequency for each input file (in Hz). To quickly fill the frequency column with an arithmetic progression (start frequency + step), press the Fill X value button;
• the time range Tmin/Tmax and the time unit — they define on which part of the signal the reconstruction is performed. 4. Press the Export to S button (or OK). The program processes all the marked files in turn and writes the result into a single .s file. 5. Open the resulting .s in TMCGROUT to see the reconstructed frequency response.

Input: one or more .t signal files + a list of frequencies + a time range. Output: one .s S-matrix file (each processed file adds its matrix row to it).

If an error occurs during export (for example, the signal file is not found or has too few points), the process stops and the error text is shown in the dialog.

6.8. Print the graph

1. First set the scale and appearance the way you want to see them on paper.
2. (Optional) Menu File → Print Preview — check how the graph will fit on the page.
3. Menu File → Print… (Ctrl+P) or the "Print" button.
4. Select the printer and click OK.

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7. Input data formats

TMCROS works with two file formats: the .tos document and the .t time-signal file.

7.1. The .tos document file

.tos is a text TMCROS document file. It can be opened with any text editor. It stores the display settings and the list of curves, but does not store the data itself — the data is taken from the .t files referenced by the document.

File structure (using the real file samples/SAMPLE_R/ABSORBER/poly.tos):

#TMCGROTS
!Graphics parameters
!Graphics data
!file name : E:\BackUP\ARHIV\WORK\Source\SAMPLE_R\ABSORBER\poly.tos
!Data file for draw graphics
!TFileName GraphicsName DrawFlag Input1 Mod1 Input2 Mod2
poly.t poly.t 1 1 1 1 1

Line-by-line breakdown:

Display parameters (#Key). A full TMCROS document may contain keys for axis and color settings (by analogy with a TMCGROUT document). The main ones:

The correspondence of the #nXType and #nYType numbers to the item names is taken from the description of the axis types in the API documentation (docs/api/viewers/tmcros.md, §3.2 and §3.3). In the Viewport dialog the Y axis is offered as seven items: Signal, Amplitude, WSVR, L dB, Phase in radian, Phase in gradus, Delta Phase.

Curve description (a data line). The column format is given in the comment above it:

!TFileName GraphicsName DrawFlag Input1 Mod1 Input2 Mod2
poly.t     poly.t       1        1      1    1      1

Unlike the frequency document of TMCGROUT, here the Input/Mod columns address a column of the time signal in the .t file, not an S-matrix element. By the program code the first address (Input1/Mod1) is the significant one; the second address is reduced to default values when reading the signal.

7.2. The .t time-signal file

.t is a file with the time signal itself of a multiport: for each moment of time it stores the signal samples across all inputs (ports). This is the result of a compute kernel (tmc_rth or tmc_rtx). The file is text and can be opened with any editor.

The beginning of the file (example samples/SAMPLE_R/ABSORBER/poly.t):

#TMC_GraphicsOutputSignalFile FormVer2.0 2000
!File name E:\BackUP\ARHIV\WORK\Source\SAMPLE_R\ABSORBER\poly.t
#TMC_GROTS_Freq 1e+010
#TMC_GROTS_InpNum -2
!nT nBlock  Up  Uo
        0              0   7              0              0   8              0              0
        1  4.717309e-012   7      0.2920765    -0.05489582   8              0              0
        2  9.434617e-012   7      0.5586809     0.03530808   8              0              0
        ...

How to read a data line (using point #1):

        1  4.717309e-012   7      0.2920765    -0.05489582   8              0              0

That is, in each line after the point number and time come triples of "input number + two numbers" — one triple per input (port) of the structure.

7.3. How to obtain .t and .tos files

A .t file is created by a compute kernel when computing a planar structure with time-signal output. In brief (details are in docs/api/kernels/planar_rt_h.md and the kernel manuals):

1. Prepare an input template file .tpl (the structure topology, parameters, the output section). In the output section, output of the time signal must be enabled and the output .t file name set.
2. Launch a compute kernel: tmc_rth.exe (for H-polarization) or tmc_rtx.exe (for X-mode), open the .tpl in it and run the computation.
3. On completion the kernel writes a .t file with the time signal.
4. Open the resulting .t in TMCROS — the program will automatically create a document next to it. Then configure the appearance and save (Ctrl+S).

Ready-made examples for practice are in samples/SAMPLE_R/ (for example, ABSORBER/poly.t + poly.tos, as well as 1/quasi0.tos).

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8. Possible problems and their solutions