A compact, high repetition-rate, nanosecond pulse generator based on magnetic pulse compression

Magnetic pulse compression (MPC) system has been used widely over a few decades as a technique for producing short duration, high peak power pulses reliably. A compact pulse generator with a 3-stage MPC system (assembled with amorphous cores and ferrite cores) is constructed to generate repetitive pulses of maximum 5MW peak power with pulse width (FWHM) of 70 ns and rise time of 20ns at the maximum pulse repetition rate of 1 kHz into a 300 dummy load. In this paper, the detailed system design and operational characteristics of the MPC modulator are presented. The MPC has three-stage pulse compression circuit using two saturable pulse transformers and a magnetic switch. The saturable transformer has two functions, a step-up transformer and a magnetic switch. The high-speed IGBT, which was improved in switching speed for the pulsed power applications, generated the primary pulse. The generator consists of 3 isolated units with distinct functions. The low voltage unit is an IGBT switched LC resonator, which generates a 15us wide 500V amplitude pulse into the next stage. The medium voltage unit is a one-stage magnetic pulse compressor using a saturable pulse transformer which compress the pulse width to 1.5μs and step up the amplitude to 7kV. The high voltage unit is a two stage magnetic pulse compressor using a saturable pulse transformer and a magnetic switch which compress the pulse rise time to 20ns and step up the amplitude to 40kV.