Hybrid antenna sources for radiating high-power impulsive fields

C. Jerald Buchenauer; J. Raley Marek

doi:10.1117/12.218551

8 September 1995 Hybrid antenna sources for radiating high-power impulsive fields

C. Jerald Buchenauer, J. Raley Marek

Proceedings Volume 2557, Intense Microwave Pulses III; (1995) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.218551
Event: SPIE's 1995 International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1995, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The transmission of impulsive signals through baluns and feed lines, between high-power, fast-risetime pulse generators and impulse-radiating antennas, leads to degraded system performance and increased pulse risetime due to transit-time dispersion, skin and dielectric losses, and electrical breakdown effects. These loss mechanisms are greatly reduced in system designs that eliminate feed lines and baluns by combining the antenna and generator in a single hybrid device that is compact, simple, and robust. This paper describes generators in which the antenna itself is pulse charged to hundreds of kV and subsequently shorted at the feed point by an oil spark switch. These Hertzian generators maintain conical symmetry to within a few millimeters of the feed-point switch, thus providing conditions for launching near-ideal spherical TEM step waves for driving impulse-radiating, focused-aperture antennas. Careful attention to symmetry, optical principles, and precise methods of measurement has yielded subnanosecond pulse risetimes that are more than ten times faster than predictions from spark- switch scaling laws.

Citation Download Citation

C. Jerald Buchenauer and J. Raley Marek "Hybrid antenna sources for radiating high-power impulsive fields", Proc. SPIE 2557, Intense Microwave Pulses III, (8 September 1995); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.218551

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