Millimeter-Wave Traveling-Wave Tube Development at the US Naval Research Laboratory

Millimeter-wave (mmW) traveling-wave tube (TWT) devices are of interest for applications requiring amplifier output power in the >100 W range over instantaneous bandwidth of several GHz, but fabrication of the sub-wavelength slowwave structures has been a persistent challenge. We discuss the development of TWT device design and fabrication methods to advance the output power and bandwidth capability and improve the SWaP-C (size, weight, power, cost) of devices in the Ka-band to W-band frequency ranges.