Design of a Cascade Backward-Wave Oscillator Based on Metamaterial Slow-Wave Structure

An innovative complementary electric split-ring resonator metamaterial (MTM) structure applied as the slow-wave circuit for a cascade backward-wave oscillator (CBWO) operating in C-band is studied in this paper. The idea of a drift tube in a multiresonant cavity extended interaction klystron is borrowed to design a novel backward-wave oscillator (BWO). The construction of this device features two BWOs separated by a short cutoff waveguide for permitting the flow of the electron beam and stopping the electromagnetic wave. The high-frequency characteristics are analyzed and optimized by using a high-frequency structure simulator and computer simulation technology (CST). Meanwhile, the S-parameter retrieval approach is used to retrieve the effective permittivity and permeability. In addition, the CST code is adopted to investigate the performance of the MTM-based CBWO. The particle-in-cell simulation results show that the novel CBWO is capable of achieving over 51.77% electronic efficiency from 4.8344 to 4.8687 GHz. Meanwhile, the maximum electronic efficiency can reach 82.44%, corresponding to a peak output power of 14.51 MW at 4.8466 GHz. These results indicate that the MTM-based CBWO proposed in this paper has the characteristic of miniaturization, manufacturability, and high electronic efficiency.