Peer-to-Peer Magnetron Locking
Edward J. Cruz · Deep Blue (University of Michigan) · 2011
The viability of coherent power combination of multiple high-efficiency, moderate power magnetrons requires a thorough understanding of frequency and phase control. Injection locking of conventional magnetrons, and other types of oscillators, employing a master-to-slave configuration has been studied theoretically and experimentally. This dissertation focuses on the peer-to-peer locking, where each oscillator acts as a master of and slave to all others, between two conventional magnetrons, where the general condition for locking was recently derived. The experiments performed on peer-to-peer locking of two 1-kW magnetrons verify the recently developed theory on the condition under which the two nonlinear oscillators may be locked to a common frequency and relative phase. This condition reduces to Adler's classical locking condition (master-slave) if the coupling is one way. Dependent on the degree of coupling, the frequency of oscillation when locking occurs was found to not necessarily lie between the two magnetrons' free running frequencies. Likewise, when the locking condition was violated, the beat of the spectrum was not necessarily found to be equal to the difference between the free running frequencies. The frequency of oscillation and relative phase between the two magnetrons when locking did occur were found to correspond to one of two solution modes given by the recent theory. The accessibility of the two possible modes is yet to be determined. This work was supported by ONR, AFRL, AFOSR, L-3 Communications Electron Devices Division and Northrop-Grumman Corporation.