A Compact and Lightweight Ku -Band Transit-Time Oscillator With Low-Voltage Operation and Permanent Magnet

The transit-time oscillator (TTO) is one of the crucial solutions for realizing miniaturized and lightweight high-power microwave systems. However, few studies have demonstrated its performance under the conditions of low operation voltage and permanent magnet (PM) packaging. Thus, in this article, aKu-band TTO operating at low guiding magnetic field and low voltage is presented. The slow wave structure that adopts a design with a low overmoding ratio and a short period is intended to enable this device to have a lighter weight and a relatively lower operation voltage. The particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation results demonstrated that under 150 kV and 0.282 T, the TTO generates output powers of 66.7 MW at 14.12 GHz with an efficiency of 39.4%. Experiment is carried out with 0.27-T PM packaging, and the results show that the TTO can radiation 31 MW at 14.37-GHz microwave pulse with a pulsewidth of 30.1 ns. This study verifies the feasibility of the MW-levelKu-band TTO based on low-voltage operation and PM packaging, providing a new approach for the applications of high-power microwave (HPM) sources in high-mobility platforms.