Fast automatic analysis of graceful degradation in power combining structures

Graceful degradation analysis in power combining structures is essential, but time consuming, when the number of combined ways is very large. The tool presented in this paper aims to automate the graceful degradation analysis when amplifiers fail or are switched off for output power flexibility or in phased array antenna applications. It is an alternative to commercial software as the tool highly reduces the designer operations by automating, for each number and combination of outages, the calculation of the 2-port scattering parameters of the whole structure. Therefore, the comparison between different isolation solutions of the combiner is made easier and faster. Simulation and comparison with measurements on a 16-way radial power amplifier in the Ka band are presented.