Severless Traveling Wave Tube for High Data Rate Space Communications

A new generation of Ka-band helical traveling wave tube (TWT) power amplifiers with efficiencies of over 60% will be developed. The dramatic increase in efficiency over current state-of-the-art amplifiers with about 45% efficiency will be achieved by the introduction of a novel taper to suppress all parasitic power flow, the elimination of severs, and new approaches for the minimization of circuit losses. These innovations will lead to large reductions in power requirements, circuit size, and system weight, and will result in enormous cost savings for launch and operation of communication satellites. The proposed technology development promises to provide the biggest contribution to efficiency enhancement in helical TWTs since the introduction of velocity tapers some 35 years ago and will enable high frequency digital broadband communications for near-Earth and deep-space missions with multi-gigabit-per-second data rates.