Anritsu has supplied a 220 GHz VectorStar broadband vector network analyser to the University of Pretoria, doubling the upper frequency of the institute’s previous measurement capability and establishing a local platform for sub-terahertz electronics research.
The equipment has been installed at the university’s Carl and Emily Fuchs Institute for Microelectronics, or CEFIM, where the previous measurement ceiling was 110 GHz. Anritsu describes the completed installation as Africa’s only comprehensive sub-terahertz measurement facility.
The system provides continuous broadband vector-network analysis to 220 GHz and is accompanied by harmonic mixers and calibrated noise-analysis capability. Research programmes are expected to include next-generation wireless communications, radio astronomy, water-vapour radiometry, and other technologies operating above conventional microwave frequencies.
A vector network analyser characterises how radio-frequency energy passes through and reflects from a device. Engineers use the resulting scattering parameters to measure properties including insertion loss, return loss, gain, phase, and impedance behaviour across components such as amplifiers, filters, antennas, semiconductor devices, interconnects, and packaged circuits.
Those measurements become considerably harder as frequency rises. At millimetre-wave and sub-terahertz wavelengths, connectors, probes, fixtures, surface finishes, dimensional tolerances, and short sections of transmission line can introduce errors large enough to obscure the behaviour of the device under test.
Anritsu’s ME7838G VectorStar configuration provides a continuous broadband sweep from 70 kHz to 220 GHz and is designed for high-frequency device and on-wafer characterisation. The manufacturer specifies 102 dB of dynamic range at 220 GHz, giving researchers the ability to examine relatively small transmission and reflection effects across an unusually wide frequency span.
Professor Tinus Stander of the Carl and Emily Fuchs Institute for Microelectronics said: “The establishment of this facility will support research in future wireless communications, radio astronomy and a range of emerging applications that require measurement capabilities well above 100 GHz.”
The increase from 110 GHz to 220 GHz does more than double the number printed on the laboratory specification. It moves CEFIM into a frequency range being explored for future communications, high-resolution sensing, imaging, atmospheric measurement, semiconductor research, and scientific instrumentation, where both device technology and measurement practice remain comparatively specialised.
Future wireless systems are one obvious application. Engineers investigating technologies beyond current 5G deployments are studying higher spectrum bands because wider contiguous bandwidth can support higher data rates, although propagation loss, antenna design, semiconductor efficiency, packaging, and thermal management all become more difficult as frequency increases.
Measurement is essential to separating those problems. A simulated amplifier or antenna may perform well in software, but fabrication tolerances, substrate properties, transitions, connectors, probe contacts, and packaging can shift its real behaviour. Broadband measurements allow designers to compare the physical device against its model before committing to another manufacturing iteration.
That becomes particularly important for integrated circuits and devices measured directly on a wafer. At 220 GHz, the connection between a conventional test instrument and the device can itself dominate the result unless probe geometry, calibration, and measurement reference planes are tightly controlled.
Radio astronomy presents another demanding use case. The Pretoria facility will support the institute’s participation in programmes including the African Millimetre Telescope and development of next-generation receivers. Telescope sensitivity depends heavily on low-noise receiving chains and carefully characterised high-frequency components, because losses introduced before amplification directly reduce the useful signal available to the instrument.
Water-vapour radiometry uses related frequency ranges for a different purpose. Atmospheric water vapour emits and absorbs electromagnetic radiation at characteristic frequencies, allowing radiometers to estimate atmospheric conditions from very small signals. Receiver noise and calibration therefore become central engineering issues.
The facility was established through South Africa’s National Research Foundation National Equipment Programme. Anritsu supplied the system in collaboration with Tamashi Technology Investments, its authorised representative in the country.
Shared national research infrastructure can make economic sense for instrumentation at this level. A single development group may not use a 220 GHz broadband VNA heavily enough to justify the investment, while a regional facility can concentrate equipment, calibration expertise, and trained staff around multiple university and collaborative programmes.
Local access also changes the speed of research. CEFIM says high-frequency measurements previously required overseas facilities, meaning devices had to be transported and researchers had to schedule work around external laboratory availability. That is cumbersome where a design needs repeated cycles of fabrication, measurement, modification, and retest.
Reducing those delays can matter as much as the headline frequency range. Electronics development is iterative, and engineers rarely learn everything they need from a single measurement campaign. Being able to return to the instrument after changing a layout, package, material, or process can shorten the path between an experimental device and a reproducible design.
The installation does not create a sub-terahertz manufacturing industry by itself. It creates one of the metrology capabilities needed before devices can be characterised, compared, qualified, and improved with confidence.
Pretoria now has measurement infrastructure spanning twice its previous upper frequency. The useful result will be seen in the hardware that passes through it — and whether easier access to calibrated 220 GHz measurements allows more African RF research to progress from simulations and prototypes into repeatable electronic systems.
