A high-power transient coaxial power combiner for nonlinear transmission lines

Recent work on Coaxial Ferrimagnetic Nonlinear Transmissions Lines (NLTL) has been focused on developing an array of NLTLs for use as a solid-state High Power Microwave (HPM) source. The pulsed output of an NLTL requires a combiner that can combine transient signals at voltage levels up to 50 kV. Existing combiner designs found in literature require resonant structures to achieve efficient power combination. The presented coaxial combiner is an in-plane structure designed to combine two 50 Ω transmission lines into a single 25 Ω coaxial line output which then uses a logarithmic taper to transition back to 50 Ω. The combiner design was simulated using a transient Finite Element Method (FEM) model in COMSOL Multiphysics^® and experimental results are compared with simulation. A 4-way combiner based on an in-plane 2-way design is simulated and the field stresses are examined to determine maximum electric field levels encountered in the structure. This enabled estimating the associated maximum voltage level that the structure is able to support.