BULUC: An Ultra-Compact, Battery-Powered, and UWB Radiating Electromagnetic Pulse Source

For many years, modern defense and security applications have driven the development of compact pulsed power generators to produce high-power electromagnetic waves. Usually, such generators fill a volume of at least a few tens of liters. This article aims to present the development and tests of an ultra-compact ultra-wideband (UWB) radiating electromagnetic pulse source for electromagnetic stress testing and therefore vulnerability studies of electronic devices. The pulse source named source Bande Ultra Large Ultra Compacte (French acronym, BULUC) is autonomous and fills a volume of only 2.5 L (
$260\times 195\times50$
mm, without antenna). BULUC is composed of a set of batteries, a software-driven high-voltage dc supply, a ten-stage Marx generator, a bipolar pulse forming line (B-PFL), and an external UWB Vivaldi antenna. The Marx generator produces 135 kV, 20 ns rise time pulses at a working pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 20 Hz during 10 s. Then the pressurized B-PFL generates a peak-to-peak signal of 135 kV with a transition time of 260 ps for a bi-pulse duration of 1 ns. This signal feeds a planar Vivaldi antenna which can radiate a 90 kV/m peak-to-peak electric field at 1 m (+50/−40 kV/m). The figure of merit (FOM: the maximum value of far-field peak electric field strength multiplied by the distance considering the fact that in the far-field region, the electric field variation is expected to be proportional to 1/
$r$
) is about 50 kV.