NanoVNA vs VNWA3 comparison

(2025-01-19)

Preface

I have just bougth a cheap NanoVNA for just 30 € in Aliexpress and thought it would be very interesting to compare with my VNWA3.

FIGURE 1:Cheap NanoVNA from Aliexpress

NanoVNA board type and firmware version can be inspected through serial interface:

ramiro@debian-x260:~$ cu -l /dev/ttyACM0 -s 115200
Connected.

ch> 
ch> ChibiOS/RT Shel
ChibiOS/RT ?
ch> info
Kernel:       4.0.0
Compiler:     GCC 8.2.1 20181213 (release) [gcc-8-branch revision 267074]
Architecture: ARMv6-M
Core Variant: Cortex-M0
Port Info:    Preemption through NMI
Platform:     STM32F072xB Entry Level Medium Density devices
Board:        NanoVNA-H
Build time:   Oct 18 2019 - 16:10:54
ch> version
v0.2.3-2-g8ac9166
ch> 

Measurements

FIGURE 2:Measuring junk box devices

Both VNA were calibrated using a home made SMA calibration kit after a 30 m warmup time. Several junk box devices were measured and saved into a S2P format S-parameters file. Files were opened in VNWA3 software to be displayed and compared.

Results

Theese are the comparison screenshots. RED traces are VNWA3, BLUE traces are NanoVNA:

FIGURE 3: 1800kHz high pass filter

FIGURE 4: 500kHz low pass filter

FIGURE 5: 8 crystals 10 MHz CW ladder Cohn filter

FIGURE 6: 8 crystals 10 MHz SSB ladder Cohn filter

FIGURE 7: 108MHz high pass filter

FIGURE 8: 50 Ohm load included with the NanoVNA - S11 in dB

FIGURE 9: 50 Ohm load included with the NanoVNA - S11 Smith chart

Results

Just watch the pictures, they are pretty close.