Fast Rise Time High Power Radio Frequency Pulse Shaping

The Navy has a need for a fast rise time High Power Radio Frequency (HPRF) pulse shaping tool to augment its capabilities for lethality and counter-electronics testing. Verus Research (VR) team members have designed, built and tested similar capabilities for HPRF systems and have extensive expertise and experience in the field of effects testing and will leverage that expertise to develop a cost effective, compact solution. The concept of switching RF output to generate various pulses with a few nanosecond rise times and pulse durations ranging from 10s to 1000 nanoseconds has broad potential to the HPRF testing community. VR proposes designing and modeling a plasma switch assembly to determine the optimum physical and electrical characteristics required to create an efficient and reliable switch for multi-megawatt sources. The pulse shaping assembly consists of a pair of switches (front and tail clipping), a high-power circulator and a dual output pulser to drive. Verus Research will model and design the system with the broadest versatility and integrate its operational parameters into the design and the appropriate models.