Investigation on High Average Power Operations of Gyro-TWTs With Dielectric-Loaded Waveguide Circuits

Abstract

Gyrotron traveling-wave tubes (gyro-TWTs) have been proved to be an attractive power source in many applications such as high-resolution radars, high-power communication systems, and electronic warfare systems. The main output indexes such as peak and average output power, interaction efficiency, and bandwidth are important for these devices. In addition, a great deal of reliability requirements such as nonstop stable operating time, operation lifetime, and environmental adaptability should be met. In this paper, detailed developing processes of gyro-TWTs in high average power operations are presented, including theoretical analyses, multiphysics simulations of key components, fabrication, and construction of the automatic hot test platform. Finally, the measured results of a Ka -band gyro-TWT for industrial applications are presented. The amplifier exhibits an excellent performance of 100-h nonstop stable operation, a 1-dB fraction bandwidth of 8%, an efficiency of more than 20%, and a peak power and an average power of more 150 and 10 kW, respectively.