A capacitor divider with bandwidth over 10 GHz

The characteristics of capacitor dividers of disk and coaxial configurations are investigated. The amplitude-frequency response properties of two disk capacitor dividers obtained during the experiments indicate that the upper-limited response frequency of the disk sensor could be improved by decreasing its diameter. This might be due to the transit time of the measured high-voltage pulse propagating through the sensor being non-negligible if it is comparable to the rise time of the measured pulse. Both the experimental and circuit simulation results demonstrate that the upper-limited response frequency of the coaxial monitor is improved with respect to decreasing its length. A coaxial sensor is employed to diagnose the high-voltage pulse with a rise time of about 100 ps, and the corresponding upper-limited response frequency of this monitor is about 12 GHz. We have proposed a numerical post-processing method to compensate for the low-frequency response property of the capacitor divider, and the high-voltage pulse with a rise time of about 100 ps can be accurately measured.