Ku-band 500W Amplitude-phase Coherence Pulsed MPM for Ocean Exploration

Abstract

The spatial high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for ocean exploration puts forward higher requirement for output power and amplitude-phase consistency of the pulsed TWT amplifier. The kW class pulsed TWT amplifier based on broadband power combining is the key technology for space SAR applications. In this paper, the factors affecting the amplitude and phase consistency of MPM are studied, and a phase consistency compensation circuit was designed to improve the phase consistency of multiple sets of products. A microwave power model (MPM) with dual TWTs output integrated architecture was proposed which consists of two short travelling wave tubes (TWT), two solid-state power amplifiers (SSPA), and an electronic power conditioner (EPC). More than 45% efficiency is achieved in 15% duty cycle within 600 MHz bandwidth, and the phase consistency was less than ± 5 degrees.With the improvement of synthesis efficiency, higher synthesis power and higher sensitivity of ocean wide scanning and detection can be obtained