High power folded waveguide traveling wave tube based on variable-width technology

Variable-width technology applied to the folded waveguide traveling wave tube (FW-TWT) is proposed in this paper to suppress the lower band-edge oscillation and to expand the operating bandwidth when the operating frequency shifts toward the lower band for obtaining larger output power. Changes in the width of the slow wave structure (SWS) determine the variation of the lower-cutoff-frequency (LCF), which makes the LCF's distribution a frequency range rather than a specific frequency-point. The lower band-edge oscillation will not be focused on a special position but distributed in a frequency-band range in which multiple oscillation modes compete with each other near the LCF. The lower band-edge oscillation can be suppressed by mode competition to some extent. In addition, the width variation of SWS also results in the phase-velocity variation, and thus, the operating bandwidth of FW-TWT can be further improved by the optimized design of variable-width-SWS parameters. Beam-wave interaction simulations predicted that power and bandwidth improvements have been achieved without the lower band-edge oscillation. Meanwhile, four solutions are given for further certifying the effectiveness of the variable-width method in lower band-edge oscillation suppression and bandwidth widening. An output power level of over 350 W in a frequency range of 85–90 GHz (5 GHz) is obtained, with a maximum power of ∼648 W and an electron efficiency of ∼12.1% at 88 GHz with a beam current of 260 mA and a beam voltage of 20.5 kV.