The Centipede Structure in Practical Megawatt Tubes

This paper gives the advantages and design criteria of centipede slow wave structures for megawatt broadband amplifiers. The importance of matching for pi-mode oscillation and the design principles of the velocity taper for improving efficiency are discussed. Results are given for two hybrid amplifiers composed of (1) a five cavity klystron type buncher, and (2) a four cavity klystron type buncher with the same centipede output stage to produce bandwidths of 12% and 8% respectively.