Design and experiment of a directional coupler for X-band long pulse high power microwaves

Higher power and longer pulse are the trend of the development of high power microwave (HPM), and then some problems emerge in measuring the power of HPM because rf breakdown is easier to occur under the circumstance of high power (the level of gigawatt) and long pulse (about 100 ns). In order to measure the power of the dominant TM01 mode of an X-band long pulse overmoded HPM source, a directional coupler with stable coupling coefficient, high directivity, and high power handling capacity in wide band is investigated numerically and experimentally. At the central frequency 9.4 GHz, the simulation results show that the coupling coefficient is -59.6 dB with the directivity of 35 dB and the power handling capacity of 2 GW. The coupling coefficient is calibrated to be accordant with the simulation results. The high power tests are performed on an X-band long pulse HPM source, whose output mode is mainly TM01 mode, and the results show that the measured power and waveform of the directional coupler have a good consistency with the far-field measuring results. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789782]