Pulsed power generation by means of transmission lines

Abstract

A novel approach for pulsed power generation is described, in which conventional storage components are replaced by transmission line segments. Taking advantage of the propagation modes in transmission lines and making use of the fact that the time of appearance of a voltage pulse traveling on a channel is directly proportional to the electrical length of the channel, it is possible to synchronize power pulses in such manner to generate pulsed power. An multiple transmission line topology (MTLT) containing m transmission line segments is used. The difference in the electrical length from one line to the other should be T/m, where T denotes the period of the cycle. The resulting, output peak power is m times higher than the input peak power, due to either a rise in voltage, in current, or a combination of both. The current/voltage magnification would be defined by the choice of a suitable connection mode at the end points of the topology. The main advantages of the transmission line based topology are: (a) the switching elements the system consists of need to withstand a much lower power than the power experienced by the load; and (b) the system can operate either at extremely high frequencies or with very short rise and decay times of rectangular pulses. This novel approach to energy compression is supported by simulation examples and experimentally validated.