A high-impedance attenuator for measurement of high-voltage nanosecond-range pulses

Abstract

A novel kind of high-impedance cable attenuator for measurement of high-voltage ns-range pulses is investigated in this paper. The input and output ports of the proposed attenuator were both high-impedance ports, and good pulse response characteristics of the proposed attenuator were obtained with pulse response time less than 1 ns. According to the requirement of measurement, two attenuators with lengths at 14 m and 0.7 m were developed with response time of 1 ns and 20 ns, and the attenuation coefficient of 96 and 33.5, respectively. The attenuator with the length of 14 m was used as a secondary-stage attenuator of a capacitive divider to measure the high-voltage pulses at several hundred ns range. The waveform was improved by the proposed attenuator in contrast to the result only measured by the same capacitive divider and a long cable line directly. The 0.7 m attenuator was also used as a secondary-stage attenuator of a standard resistant divider for an accurate measurement of high-voltage pulses at 100 ns range. The proposed cable attenuator can be used to substitute the traditional secondary-stage attenuators for the measurement of high-voltage pulses.