The exploratory development of a high power S-band solid state radar transmitter

A solid-state power amplifier has been developed using 100-W S-band silicon bipolar transistors. The amplifier produces a nominal 400-W peak output power from 2.7 GHz to 3.0 GHz, at pulse widths up to 50 microsec, at a 10 percent maximum duty cycle and 30 percent efficiency. A high-power planar hybrid combiner was also designed to combine 16 amplifiers to provide a nominal 5-kW RF output power. The isolation between combining ports ensures graceful degradation of output power should individual amplifier modules fail, and allows replacement of the modules during transmitter operation. Higher output powers can be achieved by adding more combining ports to the design or by incorporating a second stage of combining to sum the outputs from several 16-way combiners. The feasibility of solid-state radar transmitter technology at S-band is confirmed.