This is a known issue for NI-VNA 17.5 and 18.0 that was reported in 2019 through CAR 701164. (The "CAR" acronym stands for "Corrective Action Request". A CAR is a request formulated internally by NI engineers to have bugs fixed by R&D.)
Not having the Soft Front Panel version and the driver version match can also trigger this exception.
To prevent this specific application error from happening, downgrade your NI-VNA version to 17.0. Note that you will first have to uninstall your current version of NI-VNA.
If driver downgrading is not an option for you, engage with NI's technical support. A workaround has been found, involving a registry update of a specific environment variable (NMATH_LICENSE_KEY). As there are multiple risks associated with modifying the Windows registry editor, NI prefers not to publish the details of this workaround on its website and rather invites customers to reach out to the technical support team.
This bug should have originally been fixed with NI-VNA 18.1 but, due to the end of life of a key component, NI had to stop selling its 563x VNAs in 2020. As no other NI VNAs have been released since then, and since the Copper Mountain Technologies-branded PXIe-S5090 is now the only VNA option that NI proposes, 18.0 is the latest available version of the NI-VNA driver.
