Highly Linear E-Band Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier

The Air Force has identified a need for an advanced traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA) that supports future generations of broad bandwidth, efficient and linear military satellite and terrestrial communications. To address this need, InnoSys proposes to develop innovative solutions for advanced TWTAs that operate from 81 to 86 GHz, deliver high efficiency greater than 30% with a small signal gain greater than 30 dB, have high linear and saturated output powers greater than 45 and 90 Watts, respectively, have excellent linearity specifically to support quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) operation over a very high peak to average power ratio of>3dB, with amplitude modulation/phase modulation (AM/PM) less than 4.5 degrees/dB, capable of operating temperature range of -40 to +80 degrees and capable of radiation total dose tolerance of>1Mrad (Si) and single event effect (SEE) immunity of>60 MeV. In particular, InnoSys proposes to further develop its solid state vacuum device (SSVD) coupled with a high voltage power supply for a compact, lightweight, high performance E-band TWTA. SSVD technology applies the very same techniques that enable the low cost, mass-production of semiconductors to be used for the design and fabrication of high performance millimeter-wave TWTAs. BENEFIT: The high power extremely high frequency regime has a number of potential applications. New technology in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum will directly benefit communications on the battlefield such as military"comms on the move,"personal and portable active denial systems, and other communications and data gathering and dispersal systems. Immediate application potential ranges broadly to include secure data links, video links, backhaul connections between cellular communications stations, space, radar, biological and chemical agent detection, atmospheric environment sensing, near object detection, and material imaging. The dual ability to have both very high data transmission rates and very high bandwidths, makes this E-band SBIR program, especially with the 5 GHz bandwidth, a key building block for both military and commercial uses. Such a large contiguous bandwidth is only allocated and available for E-band. Areas of commercial market interest include the RF-based commercial satellite communications programs (e.g. Iridium, Globalstar and Spaceway), and commercial SATCOM broadcast programs including XM radio, Sirius Radio and DirectTV. Current and future commercial applications for these source products also include gigabit data rate transmissions including full duplex Ethernet connectivity, monitoring and detection systems for all-weather, day-and-night operations (i.e., mm-wave imaging, airport surveillance, intrusion detection, and harbor traffic monitoring), fusion plasma research and thermal interactions and processing of materials, and a host of other fundamental scientific, academic, and research applications. The FCC and worldwide allocated large bandwidth of 5 GHz slices coupled with well characterized and understood weather and rain propagation characteristics makes E-Band a natural and ideal media for wide band ultrahigh data rate communications.