Ultrashort Microwave Pulse Generation by Passive Pulse Compression in a Compact Reverberant Cavity

In this paper, we demonstrate a device that is capable of generating an ultrashort (sub-nanosecond) high power microwave pulse by means of passive pulse compression in a compact reverberant cavity. The long duration input pulse into the cavity is created using time-reversal techniques, which allows the waveform to contain the inverse profile of the cavity phase distortion. When fed back into the cavity, the wave focusing at the output port results in a compressed ultrashort pulse with enhanced peak amplitude. We experimentally demonstrate a pulse compressor consisting of a 0.0074 m 3 cavity capable of generating a 130 picosecond pulse from an input waveform of 300 nanosecond duration with the peak gain of up to 19 dB.