Design and microwave test of an ultrawideband input/output structure for sheet beam travelling wave tubes

Broadband operation is of great importance for the applications of travelling wave tubes such as high-data communication and wideband radar. An input/output (I/O) structure operating with broadband property plays a significant role to achieve these applications. In this paper, a Y-type branch waveguide (YTBW) coupler and its improvements are proposed and utilized to construct an extremely wideband I/O structure to ensure the broadband operation for sheet beam travelling wave tubes (SB-TWTs). Cascaded reflection resonators are utilized to improve the isolation characteristic and transmission efficiency. Furthermore, to minimize the reflectivity of the port connected with the RF circuit, wave-absorbing material (WAM) is loaded in the resonator. Simulation results for the YTBW loaded with WAM predict an excellent performance with a 50.2% relative bandwidth for port reflectivity under -15 dB, transmission up to -1.5 dB, and meanwhile isolation under -20 dB. In addition, the coupler has a relatively compact configuration and the beam tunnel can be widened, which is beneficial for the propagation of the electrons. A Q-band YTBW loaded with two reflection resonators is fabricated and microwave tested. Vector network analyzer (VNA) measured results have an excellent agreement with our simulation, which verify our theoretical analysis and simulation calculation.