Benchmarking comparison of thermal and diode sensors for pulsed power measurement

A pulsed power system has been constructed to explore conditions under which accurate pulsed power measurements can be made with both a thermal sensor and a diode sensor. For the thermal sensor, pulsed power is estimated from a simple calculation based on the average power of the pulsed RF signal. For the diode sensor, gating is used to enable direct measurement of the pulsed power. As expected, the results of measurements taken with varying pulse lengths and a constant period show that the dynamic range of the thermal sensor is approximately proportional to the pulse length. The results also indicate that, while a thermal sensor can provide accurate results for many situations, the diode sensor can be used to measure with higher precision than the thermal sensor for lower duty cycles. The paper demonstrates a benchmarking procedure that can be used to explore limitations and capabilities of power sensors as well as elements such as the input RF switch used for pulsed power measurements.