A new method for compensation of the effect of charging transformer's leakage inductance on PFN voltage regulation in Klystron pulse modulators

The Line type modulators have been widely used to generate high voltage rectangular pulses to power the klystron for high power RF generation. In Line type modulator, the Pulse Forming Network (PFN) which is a cascade combination of lumped capacitors and inductors is used to store the electrical energy. The charged PFN is then discharged into a klystron by firing a high voltage Thyratron switch. This discharge generates a high voltage rectangular pulse across the klystron electrodes. The amplitude and phase of Klystron's RF output is governed by the high voltage pulse amplitude. The undesired RF amplitude and phase stability issues arises at the klystron's output due to inter-pulse and during the pulse amplitude variations. To reduce inter-pulse voltage variations, the PFN is required to be charged at the same voltage after every discharge cycle. At present, the combination of widely used resonant charging and deQing method is used to regulate the pulse to pulse PFN voltage variations but the charging transformer's leakage inductance puts an upper bound on the regulation achievable by this method. Here we have developed few insights of the deQing process and devised a new compensation method to compensate this undesired effect of charging transformer's leakage inductance on the pulse to pulse PFN voltage stability. This compensation is accomplished by the controlled partial discharging of the split PFN capacitor using a low voltage MOSFET switch. Theoretically, very high values of pulse to pulse voltage stability may be achieved using this method. This method may be used in deQing based existing modulators or in new modulators, to increase the pulse to pulse voltage stability, without having a very tight bound on charging transformer's leakage inductance. Given a stable charging power supply, this method may be used to further enhance the inter-pulse voltage stability of modulators which employ the direct charging, after replacing the direct charging with the resonant charging.