Improvement of Ultrashort Pulses by Serial Connection of Step Recovery Diodes

The application of serial connection of step recovery diodes (SRDs) in picosecond pulse generators was investigated in the letter. Parameters of 80 SRDs were measured, and their standard deviation was estimated. It was shown that the deviation of the SRD parameters significantly reduces the efficiency of their serial connection in picosecond pulse generators. It is proposed to select diodes whose dependencies of the stored charge on the direct current has a minor difference between each other to improve generated pulse parameters. It was shown experimentally that using this approach allows to increase the pulse amplitude by a factor of 1.4 and decrease the duration by 90 ps.