With a history that dates back 50 years, Mini-Circuits is one of the most recognizable names in the RF/microwave industry. Known as a supplier of high-frequency components, Mini-Circuits offers an enormous number of products, which includes the likes of amplifiers, filters, mixers, and couplers, just to name a select few.
However, in 2018, Mini-Circuits made news by unveiling a product unlike anything the company had previously offered. Dubbed the UVNA-63, it’s a vector-network-analyzer (VNA) kit intended for the academic community (Fig. 1). Mini-Circuits describes it as a research and educational tool—a do-it-yourself (DIY) kit that contains everything engineering students need to build a fully functional VNA. In Mini-Circuits’ own words, the UVNA-63 “bridges the gap between textbook theory in the classroom and practical, real-world measurements in the lab.” Mini-Circuits partnered with Vayyar to develop the VNA kit.