The LHC beam pipe waveguide mode reflectometer

The waveguide-mode reflectometer for obstacle detection in the LHC beam pipe has been intensively used for more than 18 months. The "Assembly" version is based on the synthetic pulse method using a modern vector network analyzer. It has mode selective excitation couplers for the first TE and TM mode and uses a specially developed waveguide mode dispersion compensation algorithm with external software. In addition there is a similar "In Situ" version of the reflectometer which uses permanently installed microwave couplers at the end of each of the nearly 3 km long LHC arcs. During installation a considerable number of unexpected objects have been found in the beam pipes and subsequently removed. Operational statistics and lessons learned are presented and the overall performance is discussed.