Development of a High-Voltage Tunable Source for Wideband and Mesoband Effects Testing

We present system considerations for the design of a tunable mesoband source based on a parallel-plate Blumlein architecture. Here, we discuss the switching characteristics, electrode shaping, and tunability of a system designed to operate from 100 MHz to 1.5 GHz with charge voltages up to 100 kV. The first prototypes that have been tested and are reported on here have been tested at charge voltages up to 50 kV for operating frequencies of 500 MHz and 1.4 GHz. The requirements of the high-voltage system necessitated a high-pressure switch that is fully integrated into the Blumlein, requiring detailed mechanical design. A full system design is presented, which will be constructed and tested in future work.