An untuned cavity as a high effective temperature millimetre wave calibration source

An untuned cavity has been developed and characterized as a microwave source of high effective radiometric temperature. This source is intended for use in the calibration of the Fabry-Perot millimetre wave spectrometers in use on the Joint European Torus (JET). Radiation input to the cavity is provided by backward wave oscillators operating between 100 and 170 GHz at a typical bandwidth of 0.5 GHz. The cavity is shown to give an isotropic output which simulates that from a black body source observed with a bandwidth smaller than the resolution of the spectrometer.