Traveling wave tube-based LINC transmitters

Traveling wave tubes (TWTs) have unparalleled power efficiency in the microwave frequency regime and above. Linear amplification with nonlinear components (LINC) is a transmission architecture capable of achieving both power and spectral efficiency. By using amplifiers operated near saturation, LINC has drawn great attention in the solid state community, but has not been explored in the context of high power TWT applications. We demonstrate that in the presence of realistic imperfections the LINC TWT transmitter achieves -45 dBc or better spectral regrowth while operating under saturated, maximum efficiency conditions. In our simulations, the amplifier model is based on actual TWT measurements.