Factors leading to the development of ceramic hydrogen thyratrons

Hydrogen thyratrons are used as switching tubes in line-type pulsers in most high-power radar equipment.1,2 A lumped-constant transmission line is repetitively charged to a high voltage and discharged by firing the hydrogen thyratron to provide pulses of power to the radio-frequency oscillator tube. The transmission time of the resulting high-frequency pulses to the object scanned and back to the receiver is the mechanism by which distances are measured by the radar equipment.