NanoVNA Circuit Design Lab: Characterizing Filters, Amplifiers, Cables, and RF Components for Electronics Engineers and Makers (The NanoVNA Handbook Series)

You've built the circuit. It looks right. It should work. But when you power it up, the signal is weak, the filter is deaf, or the amplifier sings its own unwanted song into the ether. The schematic promised performance. Reality delivered disappointment. Somewhere between theory and copper, your design betrayed you — and you have no way to see where, or why.
Every RF engineer and maker hits this wall. The tools that reveal the truth — professional vector network analyzers — cost more than a car. So you guess. You swap components. You hope. And you waste weeks chasing problems that a single measurement would have exposed in minutes.
The NanoVNA changed the rules. A pocket-sized vector network analyzer that costs less than a dinner out, yet measures the S-parameters that define how your circuits actually behave at radio frequencies. But owning the tool is not the same as wielding it. Without the knowledge to interpret what it shows, you are still guessing — just with prettier graphs.
NanoVNA Circuit Design Lab closes that gap. This is the third book in the definitive NanoVNA series, and it is built for the circuit designer who is done with guessing and ready for precision.
Inside, you will learn to characterize every component that matters in your signal chain. Design and verify filters — low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, and notch — measuring insertion loss, return loss, shape factor, and the group delay that determines whether your digital signal arrives intact or smeared beyond recognition. Characterize amplifiers for gain, stability, and matching, reading S21, S11, S22, and S12 with the confidence of someone who understands what each parameter demands from your design. Test cables for loss, impedance, and hidden faults, using time-domain reflectometry to pinpoint the exact meter where water crept in or a connector failed. Measure passive components — inductors, capacitors, resistors, transformers — revealing the parasitic elements that datasheets bury in fine print. Build and verify directional couplers, power dividers, hybrids, and isolators. Take your prototypes from bench to production with calibration discipline, de-embedding techniques, environmental testing, and statistical rigor that separates amateur builds from professional products.
Each technique is grounded in real projects: a 2.4 GHz ISM band filter, a low-noise amplifier for satellite reception, a crystal filter group delay analysis for CW and SSB communications, a hand-wound toroidal inductor Q-factor comparison, a complete antenna feed line evaluation. You will not just read about methods. You will see them applied, interpreted, and refined until the measurement matches the intent.
The writing is clear, direct, and technically deep — no filler, no fluff, no forced enthusiasm. Just the knowledge you need to make circuits that work, documented with the rigor that lets you replicate, improve, and ship.
If you are an electronics engineer tired of specifying components you have never truly measured, a maker ready to move from working once to working always, a ham radio operator optimizing a station that deserves better than guesswork, or a student building the intuition that lectures alone cannot provide — this book is your next step.
Stop building blind. Start characterizing with precision. Add NanoVNA Circuit Design Lab to your workbench today.