Design and development of 6.5 kW X-band inverted slot-mode coupled-cavity TWT

An X-band coupled-cavity travelling wave tube (CC-TWT) with 6.5 kW peak power at 1.0% duty and 2% bandwidth has been designed and developed for airborne radar applications. It utilizes an inverted slot-mode coupled-cavity slow-wave structure which is also termed as an inter-digital structure when the slot-angle becomes quite large. This structure offers the advantages of higher efficiency, reduced cross-section and lesser weight but has relatively smaller bandwidth as compared to a conventional CC-TWT. The design of the required TWT carried out by MTRDC was modified and optimized jointly with ISTOK under a contract granted by MTRDC. The main specifications of the TWT are detailed in this paper.