In a backward wave oscillator the wave

When a circular waveguide is rotated by 90°, the configuration remain the same.

A Gunn diode uses GaAs which has a negative differential mobility, i.e., a decrease in carrier velocity with increase in electric field.

This effects is called transferred electron effect. The impedance of a Gunn diode is tens of ohms.

A Gunn diode oscillator has a resonant cavity, an arrangement to couple Gunn diode to cavity, biasing arrangement for Gunn diode and arrangement to couple RF power to load.

Applications of Gunn diode oscillator include continuous wave radar, pulsed radar and microwave receivers.

An Impatt diode has n⁺ - p - i - p ⁺ structure and is used with reverse bias.

It exhibits negative resistance and operates on the principle of avalanche breakdown. Impatt diode circuits are classified as broadly tunable circuit, low Q circuit and high Q circuit.

The impedance of Impatt diode is a few ohms. The word Impatt stands for Impact Avalanche Transit Time diode.

The features of Impatt diode oscillator are : Frequency 1 to 300 GHz, Power output (0.5 W to 5 W for single diode circuit and upto 40 W for combination of several diodes), efficiency about 20%.

Its applications include police radar systems, low power microwave transmitter etc.

It is somewhat similar to TWT and can deliver microwave power over a wide frequency band.

It has an electron gun and a helix structure. However the interaction between electron beam and RF wave is different than in TWT.

The growing RF wave travels in opposite direction to the electron beam.

The frequency of wave can be changed by changing the voltage which controls the beam velocity.

Moreover the amplitude of oscillations can be decreased continuously to zero by changing the beam current.

It features are:

1. Frequency range - 1 GHz to 1000 GHz.

2. Power output - 10 mV to 150 mW (continuous wave) 250kW (pulsed).

It is used as signal source in transmitters and instruments.

A balun gives 4 : 1 impedance transformation.

Oscillator circuits using vacuum tubes (triodes, pentodes) have the following limitations at very high frequencies (microwave region).

The stray capacitances and inductances become important and affect the operation of the circuit.

At low frequencies the transit time between cathode and anode is a small fraction of period of oscillation.

However, at microwave frequencies this transit time becomes comparable to time period of oscillations.

Wavelength should be less than cutoff wavelengths.

Therefore frequency should be higher than cutoff frequency for minimum attenuation.

TE₀₁ mode is unaffected because its horizontally oriented electric field is every where perpendicular to the conducting strips.

A branched duplexer funds use in narrow bandwidth applications.

TR tube stands for transmit-receive tube and ATR tube stands for antitransmit receive tube.

Both these tubes are used in branched duplexer.

When a line is short-circuited at far end, the voltage at far end is zero.

A Klystron is a vacuum tube used for generation/amplification of microwaves.

An electron beam is produced by oxide coated indirectly heated cathode and is focussed and accelerated by focussing electrode.

This beam is transmitted through a glass tube. The input cavity where the beam enters the glass tube is called buncher.

As electrons move ahead they see an accelerating field for half cycle and retarding field for the other half cycle.

Therefore, some electrons are accelerated and some are retarded. This process is called velocity modulation.

The velocity modulation causes bunching of electrons. This bunching effect converts velocity modulation into density modulation of beam.

The input is fed at buncher cavity and output is taken at catcher cavity.

In a two cavity klystron only buncher and catcher cavity are used. In multi cavity klystron one or more intermediate cavities are also used.

The features of a multicavity klystron are :

1. Frequency range - 0.25 GHz to 100 GHz

2. Power output - 10 kW to several hundred kW

3. Power gain - 60 dB (nominal value)

4. Efficiency - about 40%.

A multicavity klystron is used in UHF TV transmitters, Radar transmitter and satellite communication.