15 watt high efficiency gunn diode transmitter for measurement-while-drilling wireless system

This paper describes the design of Gunn diode hybrid-integrated power transmitter at X-band. The device delivers about 15 Watt of pulse output power, in short-pulse operating conditions, at 9.5-10.5 GHz central frequency. The transmitter is designed to be used as final stage of a downlink measurement-while-drilling transmitter for telemetry system. A commercial Gunn diode has been selected for design. Due to the MWD application, special attention must be put on the process and reliability: to this aim temperature of the active device must be kept within the value established by borehole requirements and carefully controlled. This makes the design objective very tight. The power transmitter design and some measurement results are presented in the paper.