Electron beam RF amplifier and emitter
AssigneeAstronix Research, LLC
InventorRobert LeChevalier
Life of this patent
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Abstract
RF field is sensed to produce an incoming voltage that drives a microarray of electron guns in a sweep pattern towards a detector array. The electron guns emit a beam current that may amplify the incoming voltage signal, and the detector material may be selected to amplify the beam current at the detector, for example, by avalanche and/or cascade in a Schottky material, to provide a low current, high gain amplification. The microarrays may be arranged in various combinations to produce successive amplifications, frequency multipliers, transmit-receive amplifiers, crossbar switches, mixers, beamformers, and selective polarization devices, among other such devices.
Claims210
A device to amplify a deflection signal comprising one or more voltage signals. the device comprising
- an emission wall and a detector wall separated from one another to define an evacuated drift cavity that presents an electron transmission pathway between the emission wall and the detector wall,
- the emission wall and the detector wall being parallel to one another;
- the drift cavity extending between an emission surface at the terminus of the emission wall proximate to the drift cavity and a detector wall surface at the terminus of the detector wall proximate to the drift cavity;
- an array of electron guns disposed behind the emission wall, each electron gun in the array of electron guns configured to emit electrons as the current of an electron beam into the drift cavity, through the emission wall and along the transmission pathway toward the detector wall, forming a beam spot thereon,
- each electron gun in the array of electron guns emitting a beamlet and having a corresponding beamlet deflector that is operable for receipt of the deflection signal, and
- the aggregate of emitted beamlets comprises the emission of an electron beam positioned relative to the transmission pathway, and
- the aggregate of beamlet deflectors comprises the electron beam deflector such that
- in a quiescent state of the deflection signal the electron beam is transmitted on the transmission pathway in a non-deflected mode, and
- in a non-quiescent state of the deflection signal the deflector deflects the electron beam in a swept mode of sweeping action that moves the beam spot along a sweep pathway at the detector wall;
- a detector forming one or more areas on the detector wall for selective collection of the beam spot current according to positioning of the beam spot, the detector including a construction that is capable of responding to the selective collection by generating an output current.
An analog beamform matrix device comprising
- an array of electron guns;
- an array of detectors;
- a drift cavity;
- the microcolumn array comprises N sub-arrays, each sub-array comprising M microcolumns and the deflection apparatus of every microcolumn in a sub-array is driven by an input signal VN;
- each element in the array of K detectors receives a beam from at least one electron gun in each sub-array of electron guns and outputs a received antenna beam;
- time-delay addressing means to generate a time delay from each sub-array.
A crossbar matrix device comprising
- a plurality of N electron guns, each augmented with a vertical deflector;
- a plurality of N horizontal deflection signals;
- a plurality of M detectors;
- a plurality of N horizontal beam offset signals and N vertical beam offset signals;
- a drift cavity;
- means for combining the N voltage signals and the N horizontal beam offset signals;
- and
- crossbar addressing means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.