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 communication. 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 relatively high saturated gain greater than 32.5 dB, have high linear and saturated output powers greater than 30 and 180 Watts, respectively, have excellent linearity specifically to support quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) operation over a very high peak to average power ratio of 6dB, 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 systems. Immediate application potential ranges broadly to include 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 the this E-band SBIR program, especially with the 5 GHz bandwidth, a key building block for both military and commercial uses. 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™. Future commercial applications for these source products also include 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.