Improved control strategy for active bouncers used in klystron modulators

This paper introduces a closed-loop control system for klystron modulators. The system is based on the discharge of a capacitor into a step-up voltage transformer and an active bouncer implemented with a multiphase buck converter. In order to obtain a constant Klystron voltage at the flat-top, the active bouncer must compensate both the capacitor discharge and the pulse transformer characteristic. The proposed control includes an inner voltage regulation loop that controls the active bouncer output voltage and an outer one that controls the klystron voltage. The primary side current and main capacitor voltage are included in the regulation loops to simplify the controllers. Simulations demonstrate that the strategy adopted allows to obtain a precision better than 0.1% on a 110 kV klystron. Experimental tests have shown that the multiphase converter is able to track a high dynamics reference even under variable output voltage conditions.