Study of the double rectangular waveguide grating slow-wave structure

Abstract

A slow-wave structure (SWS) with two opposite gratings inside a rectangular waveguide is presented and analysed. As an all-metal slow-wave circuit, this structure is especially suited for use in millimetre-wave travelling wave tubes (TWTs) due to its advantages of large size, high manufacturing precision and good heat dissipation. The first part of this paper concerns the wave properties of this structure in vacuum. The influence of the geometrical dimensions on dispersion characteristics and coupling impedance is investigated. The theoretical results show that this structure has a very strong dispersion and the coupling impedance for the fundamental wave is several tens of ohms, but the coupling impedance for –1 space harmonic wave is much lower than that for the fundamental wave, so the risk of backward wave oscillation is reduced. Besides these, the CST microwave studio is also used to simulate the dispersion property of the SWS. The simulation results from CST and the theoretical results agree well with each other, which supports the theory. In the second part, a small-signal analysis of a double rectangular waveguide grating TWT is presented. The typical small-signal gain per period is about 0.45 dB, and the 3-dB small-signal gain bandwidth is only 4%.