Design of a Marx Generator for HEMP filter evaluation taking account of parasitic effect of components

This paper introduces the design of a Marx Generator that can generate high attitude pulses up to 25 kV and 2.5 kA. The pulses have a wave shape representative of that used to test High-altitude ElectroMagnetic (HEMP) filters against the pulse current injection (PCI) requirements. The rise time is 20 ns and the pulse width is 230 ns on a 10 Ω resistor. In the design, it was found that parasitic effect of circuit components could significantly affect the performance of the generator. This is mainly because the pulse width is very narrow and its frequency spectrum is very wideband. The high-frequency circuit models of the components used in the generator were obtained by calculation and optimization, and then further verified by experiment. The verified circuit models were then used to design the three-stage generator. The measured performance agrees very well with the simulated one using the proposed circuit models.