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In this paper, a kind of tightly coupled array (TCA) with time-domain beam scan is developed for the radiation of high-power ultrawideband (UWB) electromagnetic pulses, and the peak-power pattern is proposed to characterize the directivity. First, the active voltage standing wave ratio (AVSWR) bandwidth of the TCA is optimized, which is the precondition for the beam scan. It indicates that the lower-cutoff frequency (LCF) is inversely proportional to the total length of the whole array; an increase in the distance between the array and the ground plane could remarkably reduce the LCF; and an increase in the element number can also decrease the LCF because of the increase in length, but more elements would make the center elements difficult to match in the low-frequency range, so there is a limitation on the number of elements for a certain LCF. Based on these results, a six-element linear array is designed. Then, the definition of the peak-power pattern is proposed to characterize the directivity of the UWB pulsed antenna. Finally, the optimized six-element array is developed, and the measured working band is 276 MHz–6.4 GHz (AVSWR < 3). The effective potential gain is 1.76, and it improves by 51.7% with a reduction in the aperture area by 68.4% compared with the previous TCA, which means that the aperture efficiency is remarkably improved. The half-power beam width of the developed TCA with the scan angle of 0° is 45°. The time-domain beam scan could be performed with time-delay feeding lines, and the maximum scan angle is over ±30° in the E-plane. The developed TCA can be applied for the generation of high-power electromagnetic environments for the study of intentional electromagnetic interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsed x-rays are crucial for various applications such as radiography, biological effects, and the system-generated electromagnetic pulse effect. X rays with a higher dose rate and a higher total dose can generate more significant radiation effects and more effective radiography. However, most pulsed sub-100 keV x-ray systems with high dose rates operate in the single pulse mode with limited total dose, and most repetitive pulsed x-ray systems have a low dose rate. This paper develops a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system with a low-impedance diode to generate high dose rate pulsed x-rays with an average energy below 100 keV. A diode with a double-ring cathode is designed and tested to produce uniform pulsed x-rays. In order to investigate the x-ray intensity and the pulse number of repetitions for different anode thicknesses, five typical thicknesses are tested. The experimental results show that this system can operate stably at a repetitive rate of 0.2 Hz with a peak voltage of about 200 kV and a peak current of about 100 kA. The dose rate is about 2.4 × 105 Gy(LiF)/s, and the average x-ray energy is about 55 keV with the 40 µm thick tantalum anode. The x-ray uniformity is better than 2:1 over the measuring plane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal-oxide arresters (MOA) are widely used to protect equipment against transient electromagnetic disturbances (TED) like very fast transient overvoltage (VFTO), high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP), lightning pulse, et al. Researches on the performance of MOA under microsecond level rise-time TED are abundant, such as lightning pulse. However, when MOA is subjected to TED of rise-time at nanosecond level, the voltage/current responses of MOA are not fully studied due to the lack of a standardized and reliable test setup. In this paper, a test setup is proposed for acquiring the response behavior of MOA under nanosecond level pulse. The setup is comprised of a pulse generator, a two-branch transmission line system and a high voltage power divider. The generator can provide stable double exponential pulse with tunable rise-time ranging from 5 ns to 100 ns. The divider ensures an even distribution of voltage/current surge wave along the two-branch line. Through the numerical analysis, both impinging and residual surge waveforms could be retrieved from measurements. The proposed method has been applied to investigate response behavior of MOA subjected to nanosecond level rise-time pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this communication, a time-frequency joint method is proposed to evaluate the performance of ultrawideband (UWB) antennas for the radiation of high-power (HP) electromagnetic pulses. First, conventional antenna parameters, such as the efficiency, gain, and so on, are translated to UWB pulsed antennas from the energy perspective, so as to get several scalar antenna parameters, since energy in one pulse is finite. Thus, the power-spectrum weighted efficiency ($\eta _{e}$), directivity ($D_{e}$), and gain ($G_{e}$) are proposed. Then, several electromagnetic norms of the radiating pulse are selected to characterize the sensitive parameters of the equipment under test (EUT). Based on these, several other scalar antenna parameters are proposed, which are the effective potential gain ($G_{ep}$), pulse sharpening factor (PSF), and peaking impulse gain ($G_{PI}$). Thus, a set of time-domain scalar criteria are proposed to evaluate the performance of HP-UWB antennas. These criteria can be calculated with the frequency functions of conventional antenna parameters, which demonstrate the inherent properties of one antenna. Finally, the performance of two kinds of typical HP-UWB antennas, namely the impulse radiating antenna and the combined antenna, is measured and compared with the proposed method. It indicates that, with the proposed method, one can not only get the inherent properties of one antenna in the frequency domain but also quantitatively compare the performance of different antennas with a given exciting pulse in the time domain with the proposed scalar antenna parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since many electromagnetic compatibility tests are resourcelimited, it is important to quantify the uncertainties of instruments beforehand. One of the common instruments is the trigger pulse generator with self-breakdown switches. Due to the abrupt changing caused by self-breakdown switches, stochastic methods based on the generalized polynomial chaos suffer from Gibbs-type phenomena and become erroneous around abrupt transition point. This article proposes an effective technique based on the Haar wavelets for quantifying the time delay of self-breakdown switches in stochastic simulations. Wiener–Haar wavelet expansion method is suitable for dealing with abrupt-changing problems and is applied to the nodal-analysis-based circuit model. The stochastic circuit model is expanded to an augmented model with deterministic coefficients by exploiting wavelets’ orthogonality. Furthermore, the distribution of time delay is represented as the mean value of a Heaviside function, which is implemented by an auxiliary circuit in the model. The statistical mean can be directly obtained from the 0th coefficient of Wiener–Haar expansion. A case study of a trigger generator for electromagnetic pulse generators is provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that, compared with Monte Carlo methods, Wiener–Haar representation provides robust results with less computational time and a faster convergence rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a Narrow-Width Combined Antenna (NWCA) is proposed for the compact design of high-power ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. The dependence of performances on three dimensions of the combined antenna is investigated so as to minimize its size with a given excitation. It indicates that the working process of the combined antenna can be divided into two stages: (1) energy transmitted from the feeding point to the aperture by the TEM horn structure, and during this stage, the passband is determined by the effect of the impedance taper, which is related to the length and aperture impedance of the antenna, and (2) energy radiated to the free space from the aperture, during which the height of the aperture is the dominant factor. Therefore, the three dimensions of the combined antenna can be appropriately adjusted to make the antenna more compact. Thus, the NWCA is designed by reducing the width and making a slight compensation in height and/or length. Compared with the conventional cubic antenna, the aperture area of the developed NWCA is reduced by 47%, whereas the amplitude of the radiating field only reduces by 2.5% with the given pulsed excitation at the cost of a slight decrease in the pulse duration. It demonstrates that the NWCA is an effectively compact design for the combined antenna in the application of the radiation of the high-power UWB pulse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsed current injection (PCI), as a conducted vulnerability testing technique under nanosecond-level transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), has gained great attention recently. Many kinds of TEDs, e.g., high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, very fast transient overvoltage, and electrical fast transients, have very fast rise time as well as pretty slow decay, whose frequency spectrum may cover a very wideband. Therefore, one of the challenges is that the existing inductive couplers cannot interact with the equipment under test (EUT) over the wideband efficiently, and consequently, they are inadequate to inject the proper disturbance at ports of EUT in PCI tests. To address this problem, a high-efficiency wideband PCI coupler is proposed in this paper. The coupling performance is analyzed theoretically based on the distributed-parameter model of an inductive coupler. By using the composited ferrites instead of the simplex Ni–Zn ferrites, the inductive coupling is enhanced. The capacitive coupling is also enhanced to improve the high-frequency performance by exploiting the distributed tubular winding. A PCI coupler with the dimension of 30 × 10 × 10 cm3 is built to be validated experimentally. The 3 dB bandwidth has been improved from 421 kHz–14 MHz to 77 kHz–39 MHz, which indicates that the coupler can be applied efficiently over the frequency range of interest for PCI tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) immunity of electrical equipment in operation, a 10-kV transmission line (TL) experimental platform is built in this paper. The conducted transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED) could be injected to the electrical equipment of 10-kV TL with power on or power off. The TED is produced by the pulsed current injection (PCI) generator, whose rise time is less than 20 ns and full width at half maximum is in the range of 500 ∼ 550 ns on short-circuit state with 60 Ω resistor. On the other hand, the 10-kV TL is equivalently designed in cross section to make its characteristic impedance being 330 Ω to conform to the value of practical case. The voltages and currents applied on the tested equipment can be measured at nano-second level simultaneously, which are of great use to learn the effect mechanisms and compare the results under different working conditions. Some 10-kV pin-type porcelain insulators are tested under different conditions, which shows the capacity of the proposed platform to test immunity of 10-kV electrical equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanosecond-level transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), including very fast transient overvoltage caused by operation of disconnectors, high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, and many other fast transients may interfere or even damage the electrical equipment. As one of the main overvoltage protective equipment, the protective performance of metal-oxide surge arresters (MOAs) under nanosecond-level TED should be investigated and then compared with that under microsecond-level TED, especially the lightning impulse. Based on a testing platform containing a 400-kV pulse generator with adjustable rise time from 5 to 100 ns, the behaviors of nonlinearity, fast impulse response, and converting impedances of three types of 10-kV MOAs under TED with different rise time were explored experimentally in this article. The peak residual voltages of 10-kV MOAs under TED with the rise time of 5 ns at 5 kA are 50.2–60.7% higher than those under the lightning impulse. The rise time of TED has significant influence on the peak voltage and impedance converting behaviors of MOAs. A circuit model of 10-kV MOAs under nanosecond-level TED is built and validated by experimental results, which can be applied in insulation coordination and design of protective devices against TED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Note, a type of Differential Switched Oscillator (DSWO) system is developed and compared with the conventional single-ended switched oscillator; the power capacity of the DSWO is twice with the same insulation level and twice total length. The DSWO system consists of a differential high-voltage pulsed source, a DSWO, and a pair of differential helical antennas. The differential pulsed source is based on the hydrogen thyratron and pulsed transformer whose peak voltage can theoretically reach ±100 kV to break down the high-pressure switch, whose limiting gas pressure is 25 atm; the DSWO is designed to generate a damped oscillation pulse with a central frequency of 300 MHz, which is also the central frequency of the differential helical antennas. Thus, a damped oscillation pulse can be produced and radiated to generate high-power mesoband circularly polarized electromagnetic fields, and the axial ratio is 1.98. According to the measured results, the central frequency of the developed DSWO is 284 MHz, the percent bandwidth of the radiating field is 11%, and the amplitude of the far-field effective potential is 105 kV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED) testing system with an adjustable direction of polarization is developed in terms of a low-frequency-compensated symmetric transverse electromagnetic (TEM) horn antenna in this paper. TEM horn antennas are deficient in the low-frequency radiation, which would lead to a very narrow pulse width and cannot be directly applied in radiation tests of TED, especially the TED with abundant low-frequency components such as fast transient overvoltage and high-altitude electromagnetic pulse. To address this problem, a theoretical radiation model and a design principle of the back-loading method are proposed to compensate for the low-frequency performance. After the optimization of the structure according to the simulated results, a TED testing system with the aperture width of 0.9 m and the length of 1.8 m is built. The rise time of the electric field measured at the center of the aperture is 2.39 ns, the pulse width is 27.65 ns, and the peak field is over 50 kV/m, which can meet the requirements of relative standards. The dimension of the working volume is estimated as 0.4 × 0.5 × 0.5 m3 according to the field distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To facilitate the cell-based experiment for pulsed electromagnetic field biological effect study, a novel TEM-cell-integrated CO2 incubator was developed. The integrated experimental system could simultaneously meet the requirement of standard cell culture condition and the various Transient Electromagnetic Field (TEF) exposure, which made it possible to study the relationship between different electromagnetic pulse exposure and the cellular responses in a reliable way. During the research, a comparison experiment was carried out to evaluate the necessity of the integrated incubator system: firstly, two different types of cell lines, which are the human prostate cancer cell line (PC3) and the pancreatic β cell line (MIN6) were chosen and exposed in the TEM-cell which located in the open area and the integrated system, respectively, with the same EFT radiation conditions; then, the cells' viability, the cellular ROS level and the mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) were detected, respectively. The results showed that in the same parameter of the EFT radiation, the processes of the cells had a significant difference and even opposite in the incubator and open area, and all the results could be reproducible. The phenomenon indicated the stability of the TEM-cell-integrated CO2 incubator, and also demonstrated the necessity to strictly control the cell culture condition when carrying out the precise mechanism study of the TEF bioresponse at the cellular levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lightning electromagnetic field which illuminated the overhead line is the nonuniform field. When analyzing the lightning induced overvoltages on overhead lines by in frequency domain, to get an accurate response, the observation points of the horizontal electric field along the overhead line should be as many as possible. However, the expression of the horizontal electric field is formulated in the integral form and should be solved by the time-consuming numerical integration process at every observation point, which leads to a low calculation efficiency. This paper proposes an efficient method to avoid the numerical integration process at all the observation points and to enhance the calculation efficiency. In this method, the horizontal electric field at a few observation points along the line are calculated in the numerical way first, then the amplitudes and phases of the horizontal electric field along the line are fitted separately at every frequency with the fitting functions of the position $x$ along the line. The amplitudes are fitted by the Fourier series, and the phases are fitted by the polynomial functions. Based on the obtained analytical fitting representations, the transmission line response could be solved efficiently. The two different lightning electromagnetic pulse (LEMP) validation examples show the validity and general applicability of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this note, a portable ultrawideband (UWB) electromagnetic radiator is developed based on a transistorized pulser with the peak power of 1.4 MW, the rise time less than 150 ps, and the repetition frequency of 50 kHz. To generate high-amplitude pulses, a 100-stage Marx circuit with parallel connection of multiple transistors is proposed. To improve the pulse repetition rate, the parallel charging Marx circuit is adopted with ferrite beads connected in series between stages for high isolation of pulses. In order to radiate the UWB electromagnetic pulse directionally, a compact combined antenna array is fabricated and connected with the pulser via a coaxial feeding module. The effective potential of the UWB radiator reaches 10.5 kV with the band range (−10 dB) from 173 MHz to 2.32 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an effective test setup and method for quantitative determination of critical parameters of surge protective devices (SPDs) when excited by nanosecond level pulse (normally rise time less than 2 ns). The experimental results of SPDs validate the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method. By using the proposed method, the response time and time-varying response characteristics can be evaluated; meanwhile, the incoming voltage and residual voltage of SPDs can be retrieved by simple mathematical operations. These parameters obtained from the proposed method are critical to the device selection when designing the fast response protective module and examining the performance of SPDs by the manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a distributed analytical representation and Gauss–Seidel iterative technique (Seidel-DARIT-field), which has a faster convergence rate than the Jacobi-DARIT-field method in the simulation of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiated field coupling to multiconductor transmission lines (MTLs) and is more valid and accurate. The process of the first iteration in this method is similar to that in the Jacobi-DARIT-field method. At the second iteration and after, every line will be updated based on the present iteration state of other lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an efficient iterative solution in the frequency domain for electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiated field coupling to multiconductor transmission lines (MTLs) based on distributed analytical representation of the exciting sources and iterative technique originated from waveform relaxation. The method consists of two kinds of iterations, the first is that the incoming EMP wave couples to each conductor while the effects of neighboring conductors were neglected; the second is that each conductor will be not only subject to the illumination of the EMP wave, but also influenced by the virtual sources which are the induced voltages and currents of the neighboring conductors at the previous iteration. The key highlights of the proposed method are that the induced voltage and current at each iteration are considered as the virtual distributed exciting sources for next iteration, and the integrals were solved analytically by the Baum–Liu–Tesche equation, leading to a pretty good efficiency and quick convergence for most real cases. The validation results over a wide range show that the proposed method could efficiently handle EMP coupling to MTLs with a large number of conductors and the accuracy of the solutions is closely related to the number of iterations allowing the flexibility to choose between the accuracy and the time cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the shortcomings of the existing test methods, this paper provides a new procedure for validating the requirements on the repetition rate of repeating electromagnetic pulses when assessing the electromagnetic immunity of electronic devices. The pulse repetition rate should not be chosen arbitrarily, but should be consistent with the properties of the device under test. Two examples of a 60 W electrical power unit and a "Panasonic" video camera are presented to validate the conclusion in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]