Designing a low-cost high-performance 10 MHz – 15 GHz vector network analyzer

Posted by pdziepak 4/15/2025

Designing a low-cost high-performance 10 MHz – 15 GHz vector network analyzer(hforsten.com)

102 points | 25 comments

henrikf 4/15/2025|

Thanks for the submission. Author here if you have any questions.

Sanzig 4/15/2025||

Not a technical question, just want to say I really appreciate your projects! I work with a group of radar engineers and they were absolutely floored by your €800 C-band polarimetric SAR drone.

Any tips for working on hobby RF/microwave projects and staying motivated while doing them? I am an EE and have a long list of projects I want to do at home, but I can never seem to find the time to do them.

henrikf 4/15/2025||

I have also had issues with motivation. I had a long pause from about 2019 to 2024 where I didn't work on personal electronics projects because I didn't have enough motivation. This and last year however I have been very productive and it's hard to say what exactly changed, just felt like working on them.

certku3 4/16/2025|||

I'm surprised you're not using SMA edge connectors designed for 15G. The ones you're using, with the long center pin, aren't really 50 ohm above 6G. Higher freq SMAs have really tiny center pin for SMT soldering with low capacitance.

lmpdev 4/16/2025||

Makes sense

I work in retail but most 5G devices have these awful TS9 or similar connectors which we have to adapt to something usable like SMA

I literally have customers returning products as faulty because “the connector just will not sit correctly!” - even though it’s performing as intended

onenukecourse 4/15/2025|||

I just want to say thank you for your work. I bought one for the lab last year and I love it. Maybe even saved my job.

gcormier 4/15/2025|||

Do you have a link to the files on github? I assume https://github.com/Ttl/vna2 is the older version?

henrikf 4/15/2025||

It's not on Github, but I do have schematic at the end of the blog post. vna2 is the previous version.

proee 4/15/2025||

Can you please create a high speed oscilloscope next? :-)

CamperBob2 4/16/2025||

Depending on what you mean by 'high speed', this project may be of interest: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/haasosco...!

kayson 4/15/2025||

Have you considered making something more expensive with better performance? Commercially? You mention Keysight VNA's in the $10,000+ range, but we regularly buy VNA's in the $100,000+ range. I imagine with a $1000 budget you could do quite a lot.

mycatisblack 4/17/2025||

Thank you for elaborating on your design & making it public.

Last winter I made a design for a hobby spectrum analyser and the main stumbling block was a suitable low phase noise oscillator. Most of the RF sources that I came about have terrible spurs from pll adjusts when they are used for sweeping. I’ve been thinking about buying a YIG on ebay and do it that way but that approach would devalue the project for open source.

I’m eager to look at that lmx2594 you use, thank you for the article.

halayli 4/15/2025||

If you're interested in RF circuits, I highly recommend taking a look at X-MWblocks prototyping framework by https://quanticxmw.com/

ost-ing 4/15/2025||

Been following your blog for a while, such amazing depth and write ups!

kayson 4/15/2025||

Very impressive. Interesting how expensive the components get. I'm guessing it's more of a "anyone who really needs this can afford it" kind of thing.

nonford150 4/16/2025||

Really love your work. Used to work for a microwave components (passive and active + measurement) house back in the 70s and 80s, and still miss it.

krapht 4/16/2025||

It's so rare to see work at this level posted online. RF experimentation isn't as popular as it used to be. I enjoyed this article!

tiffanyh 4/15/2025||

TIL: Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs) tests component specifications and verify design simulations, ensuring system compatibility.