Title :
An intermediate power amplifier upgrade for 40 to 80 Mhz for the alcator C-Mod ICRF transmitters
Author :
Binus, A. ; Wukitch, S.J. ; Lin, Y. ; Murray, R. ; Pfeiffer, A. ; Gwinn, D.
Author_Institution :
Plasma Sci. & Fusion Center, Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
ICRF operations with Alcator C-Mod consists of 4 transmitters, of which two are tunable within the 40 MHz to 80 MHz band. These transmitters were comprised of 3 stages all of which employed vacuum tube amplifiers. As a part of the general plan to upgrade the two tunable transmitters, a project was implemented to replace the first stage, the intermediate power amplifier, with a 10 kilowatt solid state broadband amplifier. There were two primary benefits from the upgrade. The tuning of the transmitters was considerably simplified and better performance was obtained under a variety of operational conditions by having a conservative power margin. The improvements obtained are an important first step toward advancing the overall radio frequency performance of the transmitters and minimizing the time intensive task of changing the frequency of operation.
Keywords :
Tokamak devices; fusion reactor ignition; fusion reactor operation; plasma radiofrequency heating; power amplifiers; transmitters; vacuum tubes; Alcator C-Mod; ICRF operations; frequency 40 MHz to 80 MHz; power amplifier; radio frequency; solid state broadband amplifier; tunable transmitters; vacuum tube amplifiers; Broadband amplifiers; Electron tubes; Nuclear and plasma sciences; Power amplifiers; Pulse amplifiers; Radio frequency; Radio transmitters; Solid state circuits; Tunable circuits and devices; Tuning;
Conference_Titel :
Fusion Engineering, 2009. SOFE 2009. 23rd IEEE/NPSS Symposium on
Conference_Location :
San Diego, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2635-5
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2636-2
DOI :
10.1109/FUSION.2009.5226410
