United States of America As Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

Lynn M Miner

Donald E Voss

Kenneth O Busby

Richard John Adler

Charles D Cremer

Robert A Koslover

Gerald F Kiuttu

William P Geren

A waveguide mode converting apparatus especially of the TM.sub.01 to TE.sub.11 converting type and usable in circuit waveguide apparatus with desirable high efficiency and relatively small physical size is disclosed. The mode converter employs the combination of an asymmetrically shaped conical frustum waveguide segment together with a radially disposed fin having tapered input and output or ramp surfaces. Details of a 1.3 gigahertz embodiment of the mode converter including dimensions are included along with the results of efficiency measuring and indications of alternate arrangements of the invention.

Circular TM.sub.01 to TE.sub.11 waveguide mode converter

A passive cylindrical integrator assembly is disclosed which provides an output voltage into 50 ohm load that is proportional to the time integral of the input voltage. The device has a bandpass of greater than 1000 MHz plus and a risetime which is less than 350 picoseconds. The device produces negligible overshoot for very fast rising and falling signals. The construction of the device uses low cost materials and is configured into a cylindrical shape. The cylindrical housing concentrically supports front and rear connectors or center pins. Each center pin is connected to a 470 ohm 1/4 watt resistor. The resistors are in turn held in place by a screw and nut in contact with the graphite material which fills the center of the cylinder. A dielectric film surrounds the graphite material insulating it from the outer housing wall.

Gigahertz bandpass passive integrator

A pulse sharpening circuit is disclosed for decreasing the current and voltage risetimes of pulse power devices. It is useful in many systems ranging from the particle beam fusion accelerator to field emission electron guns for intense microwave sources requiring an extremely quick high power turn-on for proper operation. A polyvinyl chloride dielectric flashover switch is used in combination with a velvet covered transmission line which has a metal ring near its end to produce switching when the initial radial electron flow is diverted to axial electron flow as the critical magnetic insulation current is exceeded. Nominal peak voltages of 500 Kv have been obtained with current and voltage risetimes of 0.5 nanoseconds.

Fast risetime pulse power system

An electric field sensor which may be used to detect the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which accompanies a nuclear explosion, as well as other pulsed electric fields, is disclosed. One embodiment of this sensor has been constructed with an overall dimension of less than 5 cm. In general a sensor can be built to conform to an arbitrarily shaped conducting surface such as an airplane surface. Because of this conformity the sensor does not perturb the electric field being measured. By building the probe so that its RC time constant is much greater than the pulse rise time the probe output voltage is self integrated, and produces an output that is proportional to the signal itself rather than to its derivative. The nondifferentiating or self-integrating feature allows full utilization of the sensor/oscilloscope bandpass.

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Albo, NM, United States of America

Lynn M Miner