Design of electronic circuits of nanosecond impulser based on avalanche transistor

Abstract

With the fast development of all-optical network (AON), high-performance optic switch attacts more attention in optical communication industries. The key point of MO switch used in AON required the response time is short and typical response time of control circuit current stay on nanosecond order. So the required nanosecond pulse generator characterizes good stability, nanosecond rising edge, large amplitude and high repetition. Avalanche transistor is an ideal device which can provide a pulse with rapid response time and large amplitude simultaneously. Among the ordinary high-frequency and low-power transistor, there are also a lot of transistors adopt the avalanche characteristic, for instance 2N5551, 3DB2N, 2N2369A, and so forth. Therefore, an electronic circuit of nanosecond impulser based on avalanche transistor is designed and investigated in this study. On the basis introducing the characteristics of transistor avalanche, the electronic circuits of nanosecond impulser is analyzed, simulated and tested by experiments respectively. The experiment results stated that the nanosecond impulser can output the pulse,with rising edge time 1.9∼3.2ns, pulse width 5∼100 ns and voltage amplitude 10∼100 V,good agreement between measured and simulated results was achieved.