High-Power Multicarrier Generation for RF Breakdown Testing

Testing of satellite components for high RF power breakdown effects, such as multipactor and corona or passive-intermodulation, is a topic of growing interest in the aerospaceindustry. Switching from the classical single carrier approach to the more realistic multicarrier scenario is very challenging from the experimental point of view. The multicarrier signals, amplified by several RF power amplifiers, need to have controlled phase, amplitude, and frequency in each carrier. Fine tuning of the signal generator phases is required in order to compensate the phase drift occurring in the active elements of the test bed. This paper presents an efficient and low-cost technique to generate multicarrier signals, valid for testing vacuum breakdown phenomena in satellite components.