HIGH POWER, REPETITIVE STACKED BLUMLEIN PULSE GENERATORS COMMUTED BY A SINGLE SWITCHING ELEMENT

The stacked Blumlein pulse power source developed at the University of Texas at Dallas consists of several triaxial Blumleins stacked in series at one end. The lines are charged in parallel and synchronously commuted with a single switching element at the other end. In this way relatively low charging voltages are multiplied to give the desired discharge voltage across an arbitrary load without the need for complex Marx bank circuitry. In this work, performance of this novel pulser with different line configurations prior and after stacking the lines has been characterized. The voltage gain across a matched load approaches the number of lines. Higher voltage gains available from the pulser with extended charging plates are attributed to the reduction of parasitic modes. Effects of different line configurations in the pulse durations of generated waveforms are discussed.