Experimental verification of multipactor prediction methods in multicarrier systems

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to experimentally check the performance of the most popular multipactor breakdown prediction method for multi-carrier signals, the 20-gap-crossing rule. Extreme frequency-times-gap and carrier combinations have been chosen. The nonstationary multipactor theory is proposed as an alternative. Results show that the 20-gap-crossing rule performs radically different depending on each specific case. It can be conservative in excess, or clearly not conservative. Comparing the two methods, the prediction accuracy of the nonstationary theory is much better than the 20-gap-crossing rule.