Design and Development of an S-band Helix Travelling Wave Tube

A 30W (peak) S-band helix travelling wave tube (TWT) has been designed and developed. Specialised techniques for the fabrication of gridded gun, rf attenuators and stainless steel to alumina sealing were developed. A number of tubes were successfully fabricated, processed and tested to check the reproducibility of rf output characteristics. The hot test results were found comparable with the predicted results. Computer aided design packages were used to validate the design of the vital components and predict the performance of the TWT.