Antenom's NanoFarfield Is a Portable Kit Designed to Enhance NanoVNA, LiteVNA Analyzers

Turkish antenna specialist Antenom Antenna Technologies is preparing to launch a portable far-field measurement system designed for use with low-cost vector network analyzers (VNas): the NanoFarfield.

"NanoFarfield is a new antenna measurement system that enables reliable far-field radiation-pattern and gain measurements for students, educators, researchers, engineers, and makers," Antenom's Umut Bulus explains. "It combines a precision motorized rotation platform, amplifier + RF limiter module, and measurement software that synchronizes VNA captures with angular metadata to produce high-quality polar and Cartesian radiation patterns. NanoFarfield is engineered to provide reproducible, verifiable measurements at a fraction of the cost of traditional commercial far-field ranges. NanoFarfield is a catalyst for a new era of accessible, decentralized RF engineering, no lab required."

A vector network analyzer (VNA) is a staple of the radio-frequency engineer's toolkit, combining a signal generator with a test set and receiver to plot how a device under test reacts to changing signals. Unlike the simpler scalar network analyzer (SNA), a VNA measures both amplitude and phase — and, in the case of hobbyist-centric devices like the NanoVNA, can output its findings as a chart on a built-in display in addition to saving it for later analysis.

Far-field measurement, where the measurements are performed at a distance from the antenna, needs more than just a VNA and the antenna to be tested — which is where the NanoFarfield comes in. Designed for portability, the device expands NanoVNA and LiteVNA low-cost vector network analyzers with 360-degree motorized rotation with a typical one-degree angular resolution, a 50MHz to 6GHz frequency range for the integrated limiter-amplifier module, and USB power.

"The system comes with easy to use software, letting you set start, stop, and step angles with one-degree precision for accurate measurements," the company says. "Simply enter your start, stop, and step frequencies to define your measurement range. The system includes a mounting interface for antennas, and we also provide 3D CAD models in STEP format so you can 3D-print custom adapters if needed."

Antenom is preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the NanoFarfield, with interested parties invited to sign up on the Crowd Supply campaign page to be notified when it goes live; the company has pledged to make "STEP files, the BoM [Bill of Materials], and other manufacturing documents available under a CERN-OHL-S [strongly reciprocal open hardware] license," but says that the device's software will remain closed-source due to its use of a proprietary signal-processing algorithm.