Quasi-Optical Cavity Virtual Cathode Oscillator for MicrowaveGeneration

A new configuration of a virtual cathode oscillator (VCO), i.e., quasi-optical cavity VCO, is proposed for high-power microwave generation. The analysis and simulation are carried out to investigate the characteristics of this configuration. In the numerical simulation, the microwave output power of 2.93 GW is obtained with an electron beam of 610 keV in electron energy and 26.7 kA in the beam current. The beam-to-microwave power efficiency is 18%. The frequency is 17.5 GHz, and the output microwave mode is TEM₁₀.