Multipactor testing and emerging qualification protocols

Interest on high RF power breakdown phenomena has been growing in recent years. Microwave vacuum devices are being used in space and on many terrestrial applications, where undesired multipactor effects can degrade their performance and features. Therefore, multipactor testing is advancing in several areas, and particularly in order to cover the gap between the classical single carrier scenarios to real world environment. Multicarrier and digital modulations also represent a challenge from the technical and regulatory point of view. This work presents the most recent advances on the multipactor testing, and describes a state of the art multipactor test bed used for navigation payload testing.