An Open Rectangular Waveguide Grating for Millimeter-Wave Traveling-Wave Tubes

Millimeter-wave traveling-wave tube (TWT) prevails nowadays as the amplifier for radar, communication and electronic countermeasures. The rectangular waveguide grating is a promising all-metal interaction circuit for the millimeter-wave TWT with advantages of high power capacity, fine heat dissipation, scalability to smaller dimensions for shorter wavelengths, compact structure and robust performance. Compared with the traditional closed structure, the open rectangular waveguide grating (ORWG) has wider bandwidth, lower cut-off frequency, and higher machining precision for higher working frequencies due to the open transverse. It is a potential structure that can work in the millimeter wave and even Terahertz band. The rf characteristics including dispersion and interaction impedance are investigated by both theoretic calculation and software simulation. The influences of the structure parameters are also discussed and compared, and the theoretical results agree well with the simulation results. Based on the study, the ORWG will favor the design of a broadband and high-power millimeter-wave TWT.