Research Paper on Traveling Wave Tubes

One of the most important devices for the amplification of radio-frequency (RF) signals-which range in frequency from 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz--is the traveling wave tube (TWT). When matched with its power supply unit, or electronic power conditioner (EPC), the combination is known as a traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA). The amplification of RF signals is important in many aspects of science and technology, since the ability to increase the strength of a very low-power input signal is fundamental to all types of long-range communications, radar and electronic warfare. The traveling wave tube owes its name to its mode of operation: it is designed to cause an RF carrier wave to travel along its length in a carefully predetermined manner. The energy for amplification is derived from a high-powered electron beam, which is made to interact with the RF wave carried on a slow wave structure, usually in the form of a helix. The helix, made of copper, or of tungsten or molybdenum wire, is supported by three or four ceramic rods to isolate the RF fields on the helix from the metallic walls of the surrounding vacuum envelope. The helix reduces the velocity of the RF wave so that it travels slightly slower than the electron beam. This allows an interaction between the electron beam and the RF wave, whereby electrons are, on average, decelerated by the electric fields of the RF wave and lose energy to it, thus amplifying the signal it carries. The remaining energy of the electron beam is dissipated as heat in a collector. An alternative type of slow wave structure--known as a coupled cavity design--is based on a series of accurately sized and shaped RF cavity sections, usually of copper, which are brazed together and coupled by a slot in the wall of each cavity. The TWT was invented in 1943 by Rudolf Kompfner, an Austrian refugee working for the British Admiralty. He demonstrated the principle of traveling wave amplification at Birmingham University later that year and published the first results of his work in the November 1946 issue of Wireless World magazine. The first practical device was developed at Bell Telephone Labs (BTL) in 1945 by John R. Pierce and L.M. Field and a detailed theory of its operation was published by Pierce in 1947. Subsequent development work was done at BTL and Stanford University in the U.S., and by Standard Telephones and Cables (STL) in the U.K., with a particular eye to potential applications in the communications field. The first TWTs to enter operational service were built by STL for a television relay link between Manchester and Edinburgh, which was operated by the Post Office and used by the BBC from 1952. These early tubes produced an output of about 2 watts across a band of frequencies centered on 4-giga-hertz and had a gain of about 25 decibels. Since then, TWTs have been developed to operate at a wide range of radio frequencies and at very high powers, both on earth and in space. In fact, TWTs have been used for space communications (in spacecraft and earth stations alike) since the first privately owned communications satellite, Telstar-1, was launched in 1962. It is historically significant that, without the TWT, the world would not have seen the early Olympic Games or the manned lunar landings ''live via satellite.'' Today, TWTs are broadband devices that can handle a signal bandwidth up to about 800 megahertz at Ku-band (12 to 18 gigahertz) and even wider bandwidths at higher frequency bands. Ground-based tubes deliver higher output powers than space-based tubes, typically up to 700 watts at Ku-band and 3 kilowatts at C-band (4 to 8 gigahertz) for helix tubes and up to 10 kilowatts for coupled-cavity tubes. Space-based devices, which tend to be of the helix type, can deliver up to about 300 watts at Ku-band. Individual TWTs have been built with power gains of more that 10 million (70 decibels). In addition to exploiting the TWT for defense communications applications, the military services have developed its potential in the fields of radar and electronic countermeasures (ECM), for which its high gain and broad signal bandwidth are ideally suited.

TWTs are also used for civilian and military space-based radars, weather and other remote sensing satellites, and all types of manned spacecraft. Another type of electron tube, the klystron, was developed at Stanford University in the late 1930s by two brothers, Russell and Sigurd Varian. The klystron power amplifier (KPA) provides a useful alternative to the TWTA in radar systems and satellite earth stations. However, its narrower operational bandwidth and the fact that it cannot be easily retuned has made it unattractive for space applications. Space-based TWTs are designed to be particularly reliable, since they cannot be repaired once launched. For example, the TWTs on the Voyager-1 spacecraft--at over 12 billion kilometers from the earth, the most distant example of twentieth century technology-were still working 23 years after its launch. Moreover, the ruggedness of the TWT was proved in the late 1970s when a satellite fell 9 kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean following a launch vehicle explosion: the recovered tubes were found not only to work, but to meet their original performance specification. An important alternative to the TWTA, particularly for communications satellites, is the solid-state power amplifier (SSPA), an RF amplifier which uses semiconductor components-- typically gallium arsenide field-effect transistors (GaAsFETs). Although the performance and reliability of SSPAs has been improved since their introduction in the mid-1980s, they are limited to relatively low-power applications at a given frequency since the solid-state medium is a much poorer conductor of heat than the materials used in a TWT. Typical late-1990s GaAsFETs could individually provide up to about 45 watts at C-band and 15 watts at Ku-band, while using power combination techniques, total output powers of500 watts and 100 watts, at C and Ku-band respectively, were available for certain applications. The fact that all three types of high-power RF amplifier--TWTA, KPA and SSPA--are still in use, and will remain so for the foreseeable future, indicates that there is often more than one engineering solution to a technological requirement.