Innovative TWTs for VW Band Communications

Based on our experiences with our current E-band, 81-86 GHz Traveling wave tube (TWT), we understand that improvements are needed in efficiency, continuous wave operation, and overall bandwidth performance (gain flatness and output power flatness) across the entire 5 GHz as manufacturing of our current design is being pushed.Therefore, to achieve the above-mentioned performance improvements to obtain a successful VW/E-band TWT which meets the Air Forces requirements and sufficiently support future military satellite communications, innovative technical approaches of integrated RF interaction circuit, impedance tuners for the input and output couplers, and embedded magnetic focusing will be studied and developed.In addition to these innovative designs, we will also need to investigate new manufacturing techniques for implementing the innovative approaches.For all of these, we will perform tradespace analyses of candidate technologies, identify and design innovative TWT architectures and prototype proof-of-concept devices in Phase I study to show feasibility of the success of Phase II hardware development.Based on the solid foundation InnoSys has in high millimeter wave TWTs, we plan to develop an innovative TWT architecture that achieves high output powers with high efficiency across broad bandwidth while minimizing the unit cost and complexity goal of the Air Force.