On a Variable Impedance Termination for Testing High Power Components (Correspondence)

In testing microwave components for electrical breakdown under high power it is generally desirable to simulate conditions encountered in a system. For proper evaluation it is necessary, therefore, to employ a termination, the reflection coefficient of which is variable and which will handle high powers. Our attempt to manufacture a variable mismatch device similar to those described in the literature were unsuccessful, since we could not obtain sufficiently high insertion vswr without electrical breakdown of the tuner.