About VNA Lab
Making accurate RF measurement affordable
VNA Lab exists because of a gap. VNA hardware has become dramatically cheaper over the last decade, and capable instruments are now within reach of small labs, universities, independent engineers and serious hobbyists. Calibration kits have not followed. A kit that lets a modern VNA deliver the accuracy it is capable of can still cost as much as the instrument itself.
We close that gap by doing the one thing that actually matters for accuracy, individually characterising every standard we ship, and skipping the things that don't: brand premiums, dealer margins and paperwork priced for defence contractors.
Who is behind it
Roger Henderson founded VNA Lab in Auckland, New Zealand. His background spans automation, software development and electronics, with many years of hands-on experience building, repairing and experimenting with vector network analysers, from NanoVNA up to Keysight PNA-series instruments. That time spent working directly with VNA hardware, understanding what makes them tick and what makes them fail, is what drives the approach taken here. Knowing where VNAs go wrong tells you what a calibration kit needs to get right.
How every kit is characterised
Every VNA Lab calibration kit is individually characterised, not batch-characterised or assumed to match a generic model. Each standard is measured on a VNA calibrated with a genuine Keysight (Agilent) 85052C precision 3.5mm calibration kit, one of the reference standards used by HP, Agilent and Keysight for their own calibration work.
What you receive on the USB stick:
- Touchstone S1P files for each Open, Short and Load, and S2P files for adapters and Thrus. Load these directly into any VNA, custom software or RF modelling package that supports data-based standards.
- Fitted model coefficients: Z0, delay, loss, C0 to C3 for Opens and L0 to L3 for Shorts, for instruments that only accept polynomial cal-kit definitions.
- Adapter delays in picoseconds where adapters are included.
Because the data describes your standards rather than a population average, the calibration your VNA computes reflects the parts in front of it.
Reference standards and calibration methods
The characterisation process references HP/Agilent/Keysight calibration methodology, including the 85033 and 85052 series standards. Supported calibration methods include SOLT (Short-Open-Load-Thru), OSLT and TRL (Thru-Reflect-Line), covering the needs of most modern VNA platforms.
Companion calibration software
We are developing a companion software package that takes the complexity out of applying characterisation data to your VNA. It performs the calibration calculation offline using the Touchstone and polynomial data supplied with your kit, then uploads the finished calibration directly to your VNA, whether or not the instrument natively supports Touchstone files. This brings the full accuracy of individually characterised standards to older or more basic instruments. More details will be announced as development progresses.
Who buys from VNA Lab
RF and microwave engineers, university labs, repair shops, antenna builders and serious hobbyists who need calibration they can trust, and who would rather spend their budget on measurement capability than on a brand name. If you have questions about which kit suits your application or VNA platform, get in touch.
VNA Lab is also reachable at vnalab.co.nz.