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US 9,866,203 B1Granted
High reliability power tuners
OwnerChristos Tsironisinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
High reliability impedance tuners used in high power measurements suffer fast heating and consequently thermal expansion of the central conductor, which has a very small mass and is thermally isolated from the tuner housing. This leads to false measurements or catastrophic tuner failure (short) of either the DUT or the tuner. A method is introduced for allowing the center conductor to expand linearly without deforming and risking loss of accuracy first and catastrophic failure later. Practical tests have shown significant thermal behavior improvement.
Claims10
A high reliability RF impedance tuner comprising
- a test port and an idle port and an axially slotted airline (slabline) between the ports,
- said slabline comprising a center conductor and two coaxial connectors associated with the ports;
- whereby the center conductor is sectioned at least once, forming at least one pair of center conductor segments;
- whereby the adjacent segments of each pair are joined mechanically and electrically using
- a) a coaxial tube,
- b) two interface rods,
- whereby the interface rods and the tube are made of massive highly electrically conductive material,
- and whereby the rods are mounted on the center conductor segments, one on each side of the tube,
- and whereby the tube slide-fits on central cylindrical axial protrusions, carved out from the adjacent ends of the interface rods,
- and whereby the total length of center conductor segments plus interface rods plus tube(s) is less than the distance between the two coaxial connectors;
- whereby the center conductor has a diameter Do, the protrusions have a diameter D1 and the tube has a diameter D2;
- and one or more mobile carriages moving parallel to the axis of the slabline and carrying one or more metallic capacitive tuning probes each;
- wherein the probe(s) are insertable perpendicularly into the slot of the slabline.
10 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.