Controlled heating microwave ovens
AssigneeCanadian Patents and Development Limited
InventorsAlejandro MacKay B, Wayne R. Tinga, Walter A. G. Voss
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Abstract
A frequency controlled microwave oven having an oven cavity, a frequency agile microwave source for energizing the oven cavity, a detector for detecting the power absorption in a load at various source frequencies within a bandwidth and a control circuit for setting the microwave source at frequencies as determined by the power absorption levels. The frequencies at which the oven cavity is energized are selected by the control system to obtain high efficiency, i.e. low power reflection from the cavity, and to obtain improved heating uniformity by the superimposing of various heating patterns produced by the different operating frequencies.
Claims9
A microwave oven comprising:
- multimode cavity means for receiving a load to be heated;
- a controllable frequency microwave power source coupled to said multimode cavity means for providing power to said multimode cavity means, the frequency of said microwave power source being controllable within a predetermined frequency bandwidth;
- detector means for providing a detector signal representative of the power absorption of the load as a function of the power source frequency when the cavity means is energized;
- control means for controlling the frequency microwave power source during an operating cycle to sweep through the frequencies in the predetermined frequency bandwidth during a first portion of the operating cycle and to operate in a sequence of preferred frequencies during a second portion of the operating cycle;
- and
- memory means coupled to the detector means for receiving the detector signal and for storing representations of the preferred frequencies determined during the first portion of the operating cycle, said memory means being coupled to the control means for providing the frequency representations to the control means during the second portion of the operating cycle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.