Performance Limitations of Transmission Line Oscillators for High Power Mesoband Sources

Transmission line oscillators are widely used for high power mesoband sources. These devices have high voltage handling capability on the order of 100s of kV, with moderate bandwidths on the order of 5 – 25% at frequencies of about 200 MHz. Transmission line oscillators are particularly easy to design to a specific resonant frequency, and in many cases can even be dynamically tuned. Two common topologies are parallel-plate Blumlein geometries and quarter-wave coaxial oscillators. In this paper we explore the fundamental limits among the peak charge voltage (V 0 ), resonant frequency (f r ), and resonator quality factor (Q). We find that there are empirical limits of the product of V 0 f r Q n , where n is an exponent ∼1 that depends on the specific resonator geometry.