Development of a High-Voltage Tunable Source for Wideband and Mesoband Effects Testing

Author

Tyo, J. Scott ; Skipper, Michael C. ; Abdalla, Michael D. ; Romero, Samuel P. ; Cockreham, Brett ; Prather, William D. ; Lawrance, Julie E.

Author_Institution

Coll. of Opt. Sci., Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

Volume

38

Issue

6

fYear

2010

fDate

6/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1450

Lastpage

1461

Abstract

We present system considerations for the design of a tunable mesoband source based on a parallel-plate Blumlein architecture. Here, we discuss the switching characteristics, electrode shaping, and tunability of a system designed to operate from 100 MHz to 1.5 GHz with charge voltages up to 100 kV. The first prototypes that have been tested and are reported on here have been tested at charge voltages up to 50 kV for operating frequencies of 500 MHz and 1.4 GHz. The requirements of the high-voltage system necessitated a high-pressure switch that is fully integrated into the Blumlein, requiring detailed mechanical design. A full system design is presented, which will be constructed and tested in future work.

Keywords

SF₆ insulation; circuit testing; switches; SF₆; SF₆-insulated Blumlein structure; electrode shaping; frequency 100 MHz to 1.5 GHz; high-pressure switch; high-voltage system; high-voltage tunable source; mechanical design; mesoband effect testing; parallel-plate Blumlein architecture; wideband effect testing; Blumlein; pulsed power; tunable sources; ultra-wideband (WB) sources;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2010.2044517

Filename

5451093