News article

NPL: Benchmarking electronic calibration of USB Network Analysers

23/03/22

Picoscope VNA in use

Our new PicoVNA automated E-Cal calibration feature is the subject of the National Physical Laboratory's white paper: Benchmarking electronic calibration of USB-enabled Network Analysers. In this paper, our PicoVNA 108 E-Cal unit is tested against both mechanical calibration methods and national standards, in order to establish whether automatic calibration methods garner results as accurate as those obtained using the traditional method.

"...it was not possible to distinguish the E-Cal results from results obtained using traditional calibration methods. This demonstrates that the E-Cal unit can be used, without any loss of accuracy, in applications where previously mechanical calibration methods have been used." - Skinner, Nazoa, Ashcroft & Ridler for the National Physical Laboratory

We at Pico are delighted with the outcome of this investigation into the automatic calibration feature of our PicoVNA 108; if you'd like to learn more about the full test, check out the paper here.