Design and development of the recirculating crossed-field amplifier

The Recirculating Planar Crossed Field Amplifier (RPCFA) is a high-power microwave device adapted from the Recirculating Planar Magnetron (RPM) [1], developed at the University of Michigan. A travelling-wave, rectangular meander line design has been developed in simulation that amplifies a 1.3 MW signal at 3 GHz to approximately 29 MW, a gain of approximately 13.5 dB, with nearly 53% electronic efficiency. The amplifier is designed to be driven by the Michigan Electron Long Beam Accelerator (MELBA), which is currently configured to deliver a -300 kV, 1-10 kA, 0.3-1.0 us pulse. The RF signal will be provided by an MG5193 magnetron which can deliver microwave pulses with a peak power output of 2.6 MW at 3 GHz for up to 5 us.