Abstract: A method of calibrating a substrate positioning system of a lithographic apparatus, the method including: exposing a pattern with the lithographic apparatus on an exposed layer on the surface of a substrate having a reference layer, wherein the pattern corresponds to a movement of the substrate by the substrate positioning system; measuring overlay data between the exposed layer and the reference layer on a plurality of positions on the substrate; transforming the overlay data from a spatial domain to a frequency domain by a discrete cosine transformation; modifying the overlay data in the frequency domain by selecting a subset of the overlay data; transforming the modified overlay data from the frequency domain back to the spatial domain by an inverse discrete cosine transformation; calibrating the substrate positioning system by using the modified overlay data in the spatial domain.

Abstract: A method of calibrating a substrate positioning system of a lithographic apparatus, the method including: exposing a pattern with the lithographic apparatus on an exposed layer on the surface of a substrate having a reference layer, wherein the pattern corresponds to a movement of the substrate by the substrate positioning system; measuring overlay data between the exposed layer and the reference layer on a plurality of positions on the substrate; transforming the overlay data from a spatial domain to a frequency domain by a discrete cosine transformation; modifying the overlay data in the frequency domain by selecting a subset of the overlay data; transforming the modified overlay data from the frequency domain back to the spatial domain by an inverse discrete cosine transformation; calibrating the substrate positioning system by using the modified overlay data in the spatial domain.

Abstract: A calibration method for calibrating a stage position includes projecting a pattern of a patterning device onto a substrate; measuring a resulting position of the projected pattern; and deriving a calibration of the stage position from the measured position, wherein, during the measuring, the substrate is rotated from a rotational starting position towards at least one other rotational position around a centre axis of the substrate, and a position of the projected pattern is measured for each of the at least two different rotational positions of the substrate, and wherein at least one of projection deviations in a position of the pattern occurring during the projecting and measurement deviations in a position of the pattern occurring during the measuring is determined by averaging the measured positions of the projected pattern for each of the different rotational positions of the substrate.