NOVEL COMPACT HIGH PEAK AND AVERAGE POWER LARGE TUNABLE BANDWIDTH MICROWAVE GENERATION USING LASS SWITCHES

A LIGHT COMPACT HIGH EFFICIENCY EXTREMELY HIGH POWER AND BANDWIDTH MICROWAVE SOURCE IS PROPOSED TO DISABLE ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT WITH MICROWAVE EMP. THE CONCEPT IS BASED ON THE USE OF THE LIGHT ACTIVATED SEMICONDUCTOR SWITCHES (LASS) IN VERY LOW IMPEDANCE TEM CONFIGURATIONS ALLOWING OPERATION AT THE VARIOUS FUNDAMENTAL LIMITS CONCURRENTLY RESULTING IN A POYNTING VECTOR OF 10 DEG W/CM SQ, PEAK POWERS IN EXCESS OF 10 DEG W PER MODULE AND AVERAGE POWERS OF 10 >W PER MODULE WITH OVERALL EFFICIENCIES (NOT INCLUDING LASER EFFICIENCY) GREATER THAN 50%. THE MODULES CONSTITUTE INTEGRATED FOLDED STRIPLINES ON PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD 10 CM SQUARE. A UNIQUE FEATURE OF A LASS BASED SOURCE IS THE ABSOLUTE COHERENCE BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL SOURCES ALLOWING FOR CONSTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE FROM MULTIPLE SOURCE LARGE BASE LINE PHASED ARRAY SYSTEMS. THIS ALLOWS FOR ARBITRARILY HIGH TARGET ILLUMINATION POWER AND ENERGY AND IS APPLICABLE FROM THE 100 MHK TO 50 GHZ REGIME. THE PROPOSED WORK WILL MODEL THE SOURCE, PERFORM A SYSTEM ANALYSIS ON THE ANTENNA-SOURCE LASER SYSTEM TO DETERMINE OVERALL PERFORMANCE, AND DESIGN CRITICAL DEMONSTRATION EXPERIMENTS FOR PHASE II OF THE PROGRAM.