High Repetition Frequency and High Voltage Pulse

Generator Research Based on NLTLs

Chao Wang, Bin Yuan, Junfa Mao, Wenxuan Shi
School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
No.800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240,China,
[email protected]

Abstract-Pulse generator as a compact instrument is widely

required in civil and military field. With the rapid development
of biomedical science, plasma technique, defense applications,
new technical requirements of pulse generator are aroused, high
pulsed power, solid state, high repetition rate, ect. This paper
proposed a high repetition frequency, high voltage and narrow
pulse power device, the technique is based on NLTL compression
theory. We designed a NLTL circuit model, which can be widely Fig. 1. Nonlinear capacitance circuit
used in nonlinear transmission line simulation, discussed about
parameters that affect the circuit. Finally, we made the generator II. NLTLs CIRCUIT ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
which has a 400kV repetition rate, 8000V adjustable voltage A. Shock Wave and Soliton Wave
amplitude, nanoseconds pulse width output.
The NLTLs consists of a multistage LC ladder structure.
Index Terms—High voltage, NLTLs, pulse generator, repetition Each NLTLs equivalent circuit can be considered as a series
frequency, soliton wave of linear inductors and one parallel nonlinear capacitor.
Among them, the nonlinear capacitance is a nonlinear
I. INTRODUCTION
component which varies from the voltage at both ends, and
High voltage pulse power generator is an instrument that inductance is constant and linear. When the continuous pulse
can instantly output high power, high peak voltage and high wave is input to the NLTLs with proper parameters, soliton
peak value current. Compared with DC, AC and RF source, it wave can be obtained. Front pulse compression achieved and
has major applications in biomedical scientific research and the pulse is splitting into multiple solution waves.
national defense. A complete pulse power output can be
obtained in three steps. Firstly, compress the energy space and
achieve high density of electromagnetic energy, secondly,
compress the energy in a short time and obtain high power
output, finally, compress them simultaneously and meet the
designed requirements for output pulse. For the purpose of
obtaining high power output, key point is to increase energy or
shorten the releasing time.
Nonlinear transmission line(NLTLs) is a circuit that loads Fig. 2. NLTLs rising edge compression
continuous or periodical nonlinear elements. The common NLTLs has three quantization properties, dispersion,
NLTLs include nonlinear capacitance line(NLCL), nonlinear nonlinear and loss. The input pulse rising edge becomes a
inductance line(NLIL) and nonlinear mixed line(NLHL) with shock wave before peak[4]. When the nonlinear transmission
both of capacitance and inductance. The earliest NLTLs is line dispersion and loss is relatively small, pulse waves have
formed by parallel reversed biased diodes which behave a different voltages and phase velocities. The “chase” phenom-
nonlinear capacitance characteristics in coplanar waveguide. enon appeared and the pulse wave becomes narrow front when
This type of circuit is not suitable for high repetition transmitted in NLTLs. For this mode of operation, The NLTLs
frequency due to the performance limit of reverse biased LC equivalent circuit is considered when frequency is lower
diodes[1-3]. Fig. 1 shows the nonlinear capacitance circuit that than Bragg’s frequency. Phase velocity of high voltage pulse
commonly used. in NLTLs can be calculated by equ. 1.
High power pulse source can be used in generating plasma,
T  tri  tro  1   2  n( LC0  LC (max)) (1)
it makes plasma available in antennas and other applications.
The vacuum ultraviolet light produced by xenon molecule As is shown in Fig. 2, with the increase of order of NLTLs,
lamp is used to stimulate and maintain the plasma in the the rising edge of pulse can be continuously compressed into
vacuum quartz tube. The xenon lamp is supposed to be shock wave state. However, it is impossible due to the limit of
generated by high voltage and high repetition frequency Bragg frequency. At that time, pulse wave is decomposed into
source.

978-1-5386-2416-6/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

plenty of separated narrow pulse whose frequency is close to dI 0
Bragg frequency, and NLTLs operates in soliton state[5]. Vpump  L   V0  I 0  ( Rgen  RL ) (10)
dt
We apply KVL and KCL laws to the node N and its We can also obtain the (i+1) order relationship,
adjacent inductors as shown in Fig. 1. dI
d dV Vi 1  L  i  Vi  I i  RL (11)
L [c(Vn n )]  (Vn 1  Vn 1  2Vn ) (2) dt
dt dt Similarly, relationship in the loaded position is,
Suppose that the distance between each node is  , then dVCn1 I n 1  I n
distance between node N and original point is xn  n , use  (12)
dt C
Taylor expansion to equ. 2 and neglect higher order functions,
By using these fomulas, the fourth order Runge Kutta
 V  2V numerical solution method can be applied to construct an
L [C (V ) ] 2 (3)
t t x ordinary differential equation system for nonlinear
In order to simplify the calculation, we take the first order transmission lines. The calculation is operated by MathCAD
linear approximate solution of nonlinear fitting equation C(V), software.
substitute it to equ. 3, We designed a 6th order LC circuit. In order to prevent the
 2V saturation of magnetic flux, the 825  H linear hollow
C (V )  C0 (1  bV ) 2 (4) inductors made of tin coils are used in the circuit, and the
x
nonlinear capacitors are composed by Murata ceramic with
 2V 1  2V 1  4V b  2 (V 2 )
   (5) X7R characteristics[6]. We simulated the 6th order circuit as
t 2 LC0 x 2 LC0 x 4 2 t 2 shown in Fig. 3, the input pulse signal is Gauss pulse wave,
The right two parts of equ. 5 represent the dispersive factor with repetition rate 400kHz, peak amplitude 3000V, rising
and nonlinear factor. Let u  x  vt , we transform the partial time 150ns. Results are shown in Fig. 4.
differential equation of equ. 5 into ordinary differential
equation, then we get the solution,
3(v 2  v 20 ) 3(v 2  v 20 ) ( x  vt )
V ( x, t )  sech 2
[ ] (6)
bv 2 v0 
Furthermore, we obtain soliton solutions in NLTLs,
1.763(t  nTD )
Vn (t )  Vmax [ ] (7)
TFWHM
TD is time delay of each order of nonlinear transmission line,
which can be expressed as,
1 V
TD  sinh 1 ( max ) (8)
 f B ln(1  Vmax / V0 ) V0 Fig. 4. Input and Output waveform for 6 th order NLTLs
The simulated results show that the output signal has a
The soliton half pulse width is,
3237V peak voltage, 74.1ns rising time, which has been
1.763 compressed for 75.9ns, it shows a good consistency with the
TFWHM  (9)
 f B ln(1  Vmax / V0 ) calculated theory. This circuit has compressed half of time
compared to original output. NLTLs with different order can
B. NLTLs Circuit Model be good candidate for device of narrow bandwidth power.
NLTLs circuit consists of a specified input pulse from pulse
pump or storage capacitor, n order series inductors and
parallel capacitors, end loaded resistance. The circuit model is
shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5. PCB circuit of NLTLs

Furthermore, we designed NLTLs PCB circuit as is shown
in Fig. 5. Using power pulse device to input the signal
Fig. 3. Circuit model of a nonlinear transmission line disscussed above, and the results in oscilloscope is shown in
According to Kirchhoff’s law, the first order NLTLs Fig. 6. Waveform is acquired by a high-voltage probe
relation is, connected with oscilloscope. The output signal is with
parameters as 400kHz repetition rate, 3120V pulse amplitude,
 The designed pulse generator can provide 0-8kV adjustable
voltage, the repetition rate of the device has four modes,
100KHz, 200KHz, 300KHz, 400KHz. The input pulse time
varies from 100ns to 300ns, and the step length is 10ns. The
amplitude of voltage, repetition rate, pulse width, rising time
and waveform can be displayed in the screen controlled by
oscilloscope monitoring module.
For the purpose of fulfilling civil requirement of pulse
signal, we also designed a miniaturized pulse generator as
shown in Fig. 9. The designing principle and components are
same with the above generator. The pulse repetition rate is
Fig. 6. Output waveform displayed by oscilloscope comparably low which is 40kHz. However, the dimension of
82.3ns rising time. The rising time is compressed by 67.7ns, it is merely 50×25×15 cm3 .
and this verified the NLTLs circuit function.
III. PULSE GENERATOR DESIGN
Our group research on pulse voltage-booster network based
on high speed MOSFET switch and transformer. The
MOSFET switch is key component in pulsed power system,
RF transformer will emit large amounts of heat in the process
of operation, and cooling methods we use are oil cooling as
shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 9. Miniaturized pulse generator

IV. CONCLUSION
This paper presents design and implementation of high
repetition frequency and high voltage pulse generator. The
pulse generator provides 0-8kV adjustable voltage, with
repetition frequency 400kHz. Furthermore, we proposed a
type of miniaturized pulse generator, which is convenient for
civil applications. However, the repetition frequency is
difficult to compressed more due to the limit of Bragg
Fig. 7. Experimental system of pulse generator frequency. Further research about MHz repetition frequency
We proposed pulse power generator systems, which consist pulse generator will be carried out to fulfill the issue.
of outer circulation oil cooling device, FPGA controlling
module, industrial PC user interface. The original signal input ACKNOWLEDGMENT
parameters are controlled by FPGA, signal generator is with This research is supported in part by the National Natural
high power, and it is supposed to be cooled when operated. Science Foundation of China under Grant 61327803, in part
We designed a novel circulated oil cooling system, which by the New Technology Research of University Cooperation
effectively improved the heat dissipation performance, and the Project under Grant KX17260004.
operating temperature is 25℃. The fabricated pulse generator
is shown in Fig. 8. REFERENCES
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