Bends in oversized rectangular waveguide

S. Meschino
2
,

S. Ceccuzzi
1
, F. Mirizzi
1
, L. Pajewski
2
, G. Schettini
2
,
J.F. Artaud
3
, Y.S. Bae
4
, J.H. Belo
5
, G. Berger-By
3
, J.M. Bernard
3
, A. Cardinali
1
, C. Castaldo
1
,
R. Cesario
1
, J. Decker
3
, L. Delpech
3
, A. Ekedahl
3
, J.Garcia
3
, P. Garibaldi
3
, M. Goniche
3
,
D. Guilhem
3
, H. Jia
6
, Q.Y. Huang
6
, J. Hillairet
3
, G. T. Hoang
3
, F. Imbeaux
3
, F. Kazarian
7
, S.H. Kim
3
,
X. Litaudon
3
, R. Maggiora
8
, R. Magne
3
, L. Marfisi
3
, D. Milanesio
8
, W. Namkung
9
, L. Panaccione
1
, Y.
Peysson
3
, P.K. Sharma
10
, M. Schneider
3
,
A.A. Tuccillo
1
, O. Tudisco
1
, G. Vecchi
8
, R. Villari
1
, K. Vulliez
3
1
Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, C.R. Frascati, P.O.Box 65, 00044 Frascati (Rome), Italy.

2
Universit Roma Tre, Dipartimento di Elettronica Applicata, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 (Rome), Italy.

3
CEA, IRFM, F-13108 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France.
4
National Fusion Research Institute, Daejeon, Korea.
5
Associaao Euratom-IST, Centro de Fusao Nuclear, Lisboa, Portugal.
6
Institute of Plasma Physics, CAS, Hefei, Anhui, China.
7
ITER Organization, Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France.
8
Politecnico di Torino, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Torino, Italy.
9
Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, Pohang Univ. of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea.
10
Institute for Plasma Research, Bhat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.
The use of rectangular oversized waveguides in the Main Transmission Lines of the Lower Hybrid Current Drive
(LHCD) system of ITER, requires to investigate the problem of bends. The principal specifications that characterize the
oversized bend design concern the minimization of the reflection of the fundamental mode and the maximization of its
transmission, limiting at the same time its coupling to spurious modes that could propagate at the operational frequency. In
this paper, the performances of bends with different geometries are compared. They are simulated by using the
commercial finite element software Ansoft HFSS. An innovative modified mitre-bend solution with trapezoidal-elements
is proposed and analyzed.
Keywords: bends, oversized rectangular waveguide, transmission line, ITER-LHCD system, modified mitre bend,
trapezoidal element bend
1. Introduction
Since many years, the research on thermonuclear
fusion technology has become a challenging field of
application and development for the design of new
microwave components. The present work has been
done within the collaboration of the EURATOM
ENEA Roma Tre University for the activities of the
EFDA task WP08-HCD-03-01 (EU Contribution to the
ITER Lower Hybrid Current Drive Development Plan).
The bends considered in this paper must work in a
high-power environment decreasing as much as possible
the transmission losses and therefore are conceived in
oversized rectangular waveguide.
The Main Transmission Line (MTL), in oversized
rectangular waveguide should transmit the
radiofrequency (RF) power from the generator to the
launcher in the fundamental TE10 mode [1]. To avoid the
degradation in the power transmission it is necessary to
contrast the generation and propagation of high order
spurious modes.
The overall transmission line of the Lower Hybrid
Current Drive (LHCD) system of ITER includes at least
24 Main Transmission Lines (MTLs) that do not follow
straight paths, therefore it is very important to perform
an accurate design of bends. In this complex scenario, it
is also mandatory the synthesis of strictly performing
mode filters to suppress all the modes but the TE10 [2].
In this work we suppose to have at our disposal mode
filters attenuating higher-order spurious modes located
in the straight part of the MTL, and that only the TE10
mode is supposed to propagate at the input of the bend.
Bends have to be properly designed maximizing the
transmission of the fundamental mode and minimizing
its reflection, limiting at the same time the excitation and
propagation of higher order spurious modes modes, thus
facilitating the mode filtering.
Several bend profiles are analyzed in Section 2, both
on E and H planes, by using the commercial finite
element software Ansoft HFSS. In particular, circular,
mitre, and trapezoidal-mitre bends are considered.
The high power RF generators of the LHCD system
are narrow frequency band devices, their nominal
_______________________________________________________________________________
Simone Meschino email: smeschino@uniroma3.it
frequency being 5GHz +/- 10 MHz [3]. In this paper,
we present numerical results at the central frequency (we
will study the behavior of bends within the whole
bandwidth in a future work).
Some comments and possible future contributes are
discussed at the end Section 2, and finally in Section 3
conclusions are presented.
2. Analysis of oversized rectangular-waveguide
bends
In the current design of MTLs, a standard WR430
(109.22 54.61 mm
2
) rectangular waveguide is adopted
to carry the RF power from the generators (48 klystrons,
each one providing 500 kW CW, for a total generated
power of 24 MW) to the launcher [4].
The WR430 attenuation (copper, @ 5 GHz) is
2.4810
-
3
dB/m for the TE10 mode, so that, for an overall
length of 40-50 m, the total attenuation should be lower
than 5% of total power. Furthermore the WR430 is able
to tolerate the high power charge with lower risk of
dielectric breakdown.
The principal specifications that characterize the bend
design are:
- minimize the reflection of the fundamental TE10 mode:
|S11|-30 dB;
- maximize the transmission of the fundamental TE10
mode: |S21|-0.3 dB;
- minimize the coupling between TE10 and spurious
modes that could propagate at 5 GHz: |Sj1| -30 dB
(j=3,...,11); the WR430 modes over cut-off at 5 GHz are:
TE10, TE20, TE01, TE11, TM11, TE21, TM21, TE30, TE31,
TM31;
- the overall bend power losses have to be less than 2%
of the total input power.
Several possible solutions are considered in this work,
in particular the further considerations are relevant to the
case of 90 bends.
The propagation of electromagnetic fields in
rectangular cross-section bended waveguides is
comprehensively examined in [5]. The propagation in
oversized waveguides is a topic rarely treated in the
literature [6].
2.1 Circular bend
This kind of bend, schematized in Fig. 1, is studied by
several authors in the mono-modal configuration [7,8],
with different techniques.
Fig.1 Circular bends.
The only design parameter of the simple circular bend
is its bending radius RBEND so the design is poorly
flexible.
Circular E and H-plane bends in WR430, with
bending radius in the range 100 - 850 mm, have been
analyzed. The reflection and transmission properties at
5GHz for the optimized bending radius, in terms of |S11|
and |S21|, are presented in Table 1. The coupling values
considered in the next Tables 2, 4, and 6 are only the
most significant and those of them that do not satisfied
the specifications are expressed in bold.
The modes that do not compare in the following
tables, are to be considered below -70 dB (in absolute
value) both in the E and H planes.
Table 1: Reflection and transmission parameters for circular
bends @ 5 GHz.
Parameter E-plane H-plane
RBEND [mm] 500 650
|S11|dB -50.3 -63.4
|S21|dB -510
-3
-210
-3
The behaviour of circular bends in terms of coupling
between the fundamental TE10 mode and higher order
modes, are summarized in Table 2 for the same values of
RBEND as in Table 1.
Table 2: Coupling parameters Sj1 for circular bends @ 5 GHz.
Modes [dB] E-plane H-plane
|TE20| -101.9 -51.0
|TE01| -80.6 -39.2
|TE11| -27.0 -84.5
|TM11| -18.9 -79.5
|TE30| -79.5 -41.7
2.2 Mitre bend
A simplified sketch of a mitre bend is given in Fig. 2.
It is more flexible, in terms of design options, than the
circular one [9].
_______________________________________________________________________________
Simone Meschino email: smeschino@uniroma3.it
Fig.2 Mitre bend.
In particular, the optimization of this bend is based on
the proper dimensioning of the length l (varying from 0
to w). The other geometrical parameters are:
( ) 2
2
2
d w l
w l
c

' + | `

. ,
(1)
where w is the relevant waveguide-section side-length.
The results of the analysis both for the E and H-plane
bends, are summarized in terms of reflection,
transmission and coupling, in the following Tables 3 and
Table 4 (for the same values of l) respectively.
Table 3: Reflection and transmission parameters for mitre
bends @ 5 GHz.
Parameter E-plane H-plane
l [mm] 23.5 5
|S11|dB -15.2 -43.6
|S21|dB -1.52 -0.93
Table 4: Coupling parameters Sj1 for mitre bends @ 5 GHz.
Modes [dB] E-plane H-plane
|TE20| -83.4 -19.5
|TE01| -76.9 -8.6
|TE11| -15.6 -38.3
|TM11| -7.6 -77.7
2.3 Trapezoidal mitre bend
Starting from a mitre bend, a better design flexibility
can be achieved considering a modular structure, formed
by N trapezoidal elements [10] as showed in Fig. 3.
Fig.3 Trapezoidal-elements mitre bends.
When N is large, the trapezoidal bend approximates a
simple circular bend, while when N=2 the bend can be
considered as a modified version of the mitre bend.
The synthesis of this bend consists in the optimization
of each one of the N elements and also of the number of
elements.
We considered several configurations, from N=2 to
N=5. As the number of trapezoidal elements increases,
more design parameters are to be taken into account.
For example, in Fig. 4(a) the geometrical layout of a
N=2 trapezoidal mitre bend is shown.
Fig.4 Geometric layout of a 2-elements (a) and 3-elements (b)
trapezoidal bend.
The two-trapezoidal elements are obtained starting
from a square with side w' divided into two rectangular
isosceles triangles, with angle of 45. The length d is
arbitrarily fixed to d = 100 mm, corresponding to the
distance between the centre of the reference system and
the transverse sections of the waveguides.
It can be noticed that d fixes up the bending radius of
the circumscribed circle w=d+w/2 of the bend.
The width w refers to the relevant rectangular-section
side-length (54.61 mm in the E-plane and 109.22 mm in
the H-plane), while the design parameters are the angle
and the length w. In particular the geometrical
relations among the parameters are expressed by the
following relations:

'

) ) / ( (
) / (
4 5 0


c o s + s i n w ' - w l '
c o s + s i n w ' l

d + w / 2 w '

(2)
If a three elements trapezoidal bend is considered, two
more parameters have to be taken into account (m and
m) as reported in Fig. 4(b).
In the four-elements design (Fig. 5(a)), the square
with side w' is divided into four parts each one forming
an angle of 22.5 at the vertex V. Compared to the
previous two and three elements frameworks, now there
is an additional design parameter, i.e., the angle
45. Therefore, considering a four and five elements
bend, one more angle (between the prolongation of
_______________________________________________________________________________
Simone Meschino email: smeschino@uniroma3.it
the first side l and the second side m), has to be
considered, as indicated in Fig. 5. In both these bends the
relations among geometrical parameters are more
complicated and they are omitted for brevity.
Fig.5 Geometric layout of a 4-elements (a) and 5-elements (b)
trapezoidal bend.
The results in terms of reflection and transmission are
summarized in Table 5, while the most significant
coupling values are reported in Table 6.
Table 5: Reflection and transmission parameters concerning
trapezoidal bends @ 5 GHz.
No. of
Elements

[deg]

[deg]
|S11| [dB] |S21| [dB]
E-plane
2 25 na -14.7 -0.31
3 25 na -15.2 -0.48
4 10 40 -31.3 -0.22
5 15 45 -20.0 -0.09
H-plane
2 30 na -37.9 -0.13
3 20 na -37.5 -0.20
4 30 35 -43.5 -410
-3
5 30 30 -30.3 -110
-3
Table 6: Coupling parameters Sj1 concerning trapezoidal bends
@ 5 GHz.
No. of Elements Modes
E-plane |TE11| [dB] |TM11| [dB]
2 -28.6 -20.6
3 -21.5 -13.6
4 -22.5 -14.5
5 -30.2 -22.3
H-plane |TE01| [dB] |TE30| [dB]
2 -22.5 -17.6
3 -20.0 -14.7
4 -33.2 -29.8
5 -37.9 -31.7
For brevity, in this work we omitted the results
concerning the coupling with other spurious modes (all
of them than do not compare are to be considered below
-70 dB both in the E and H planes). More details can be
found in the final Report (EU Contribution to the ITER
LHCD development plan, SCCP/NTT-2010.001) of the
EFDA Task WP09-HCD-03-01 LH4IT, on the EFDA
website.
From tables 1-6 it is achievable that H-plane bends
better satisfy the specifications in terms of reflection,
transmission and coupling. The only exception is
represented by mitre bends that seems to be not suitable
for this specific application.
In general circular bends present the best
performances. In fact they have the lower reflection on
both the E and H planes, and the higher transmission and
coupling on E and H planes, respectively. The better
transmission on H-plane is relevant to the 5-elements
trapezoidal bend, while the better E-plane coupling
refers to the circular bend.
It has to be considered that the coupling with the TE30
mode, must be absolutely avoided. In fact this mode is
very difficult to filter because there could be the risk to
filter also the TE10 mode. Therefore, the H-plane bends
(exciting the TE30 mode) have to be designed very
carefully.
More detailed design of trapezoidal bends (for
example by considering also a variation of the parameter
d. By now, it is achievable that, compared with circular
bends, the trapezoidal bends have, in theory, big
capabilities in terms of space because they have a
smaller bending radius) and alternative mitre bend could
provide the definitive adjustments improving the
performances in comparison to circular bends, and
finally fulfill the system requirements by using only one
framework type for E and H plane bends.
3 Conclusions
In this paper the results of analyses of several types of
bends in oversized rectangular waveguide (both on E-
and H-plane) for high power applications and in
particular, for the LHCD system of ITER, are reported.
Several solutions have been considered and evaluated in
terms of reflection, transmission and coupling at the
nominal frequency of 5 GHz.
In particular, results related to simple circular-shape
bends, mitre bends, and to a promising framework based
on trapezoidal elements in various configurations. The
results obtained for different configurations are
compared, and some future developments are proposed.
References
[1] F. Mirizzi, Ph. Bibet, and S. Kuzikov, Fusion and Design,
Elsevier Science, 66-68, (2003).
[2] S. Ceccuzzi et al: Mode filters for Oversized
Transmission Lines, 2010. This Conference.
[3] Report DDD 5.4 LH.
[4] F. Mirizzi et al.: Design of the Main Transmission Line
for the ITER Relevant LHCD System, 2010. This
Conference.
[5] L. Lewin et al., Electromagnetic Waves and Curved
Structures, (Peregrinus, London, 1977) p. 47.
[6] C. D. Nantista and S. G. Tantawi, (Proceedings of EPAC
2000, Wien) pp. 318-320.
[7] A. A. San Blas, B. Gimeno, V. E. Boria, H. Esteban, S.
Cogollos e A. Coves, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory
_______________________________________________________________________________
Simone Meschino email: smeschino@uniroma3.it
Tech., 51, 2 ( 2003).
[8] A.Weisshaar, S. M. Goodnick e V. K. Tripathi, IEEE
Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., 40, 6 (1992).
[9] F. Alessandri, M. Mongiardo, and R.Sorrentino, IEEE
Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, 4, 12 (1994).
[10] P. Cornet, R. Dussaux, and J. Chandezon, IEEE Trans.
Microwave Theory Tech., 47, 7 (1999).
_______________________________________________________________________________
Simone Meschino email: smeschino@uniroma3.it