Experimental Investigation of a High-Power Ka-Band Folded Waveguide Traveling-Wave Tube

A Ka-band traveling-wave tube (TWT) was fabricated with a folded waveguide (FWG) as its slow-wave structure. The TWT demonstrates more than 700-W radio-frequency peak output power within a 2.5-GHz bandwidth. Because this type of TWT can be manufactured and assembled in an easy and cheap way, the FWG TWT will be a competing high-power millimeter wave source, compared to helix and coupled-cavity TWTs in Ka-band.