Power monitor miter bends for high-power microwave transmission

Two miter bends are described for monitoring the power transmitted in an oversized corrugated wave-guide. One has an array of holes in its mirror that couples a small fraction of the incident power to a rectangular waveguide directly machined into the mirror. Millimeter-wave detectors on the outputs of this miter bend can respond very rapidly to the transmitted power, but the coupling is sensitive to the mode purity in the oversized waveguide. The other miter bend monitors the power by measuring the rise in temperature of the cooling water passing through the mirror. The mirror is well isolated from the miter bend housing to prevent heat from neighboring waveguides from reaching the mirror. The measurement requires about 200 s to reach steady state, but it is relatively insensitive to mode purity. The measurement does require knowledge of the input polarization.Thermo-mechanical analyses of the miter bends indicate that they are capable of reliable operation with 1.5 MW transmitted through them. High-power long-pulse 170 GHz tests of these miter bends at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) are described.