Solid State Amplifiers (SSAs Sample Clauses

Solid State Amplifiers (SSAs. SSAs promise cost efficient RF power generation and the advantages of modular systems. This imply an effective combination of the single units of 1 kW (as there is no significant commercial market for higher power transistors, it is unlikely that this value will be increased significantly in the near future) to reach high power values (up to 100 kW), allowing hot-swapping of faulty units during operation. Most of today’s systems operate at frequencies below 1.3 GHz with DC to RF efficiency below 55%. In most accelerator scenarios, the RF amplifiers have to withstand significant amounts of reflected power and if the amplifier itself cannot withstand these reflections, circulators are used to deviate power into water-cooled loads. For SSAs, the addition of circulators for all single units and/or for the combined output often makes the whole system too expensive. A promising solution to reach power values larger than 100 kW, is to use combiner cavities that combine all the output of single units in one stage. The difficulty still to match hundreds of input antennas and minimise the reflected power due to manufacturing tolerances of the electronics or to failed units.