High-Power Combline Diplexer for Space

A high-power
L
-band combline diplexer to be used in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Jet Propulsion Laboratory space mission has been designed and tested for multipaction. The radar path was required to have peak power handling of 450 W with 24.25-W average. The radar filter was partially filled with low-loss dielectric material to protect it against multipaction. The device was tested with input power up to 1800-W peak with no evidence of multipaction while having excellent RF peformance, including less than 0.20-dB insertion loss over temperature.