Wideband Double-Ridge Waveguide High-Power Pressure Window

Microwave Pressure Windows for high-power RF systems are specially designed components to allow the signal transmission of RF signals while maintaining a separation between different pressure environments. Pressure windows are essential components for military submarines to work underwater and are used in airborne radar applications. Pressure windows can improve the power handling capability of waveguide systems by maintaining high pressure inside a chain of cascaded components. To be more specific, pressure windows are particularly utilized in applications where there is a need to isolate different regions/environments that have distinct pressure conditions. Pressure windows can be realized using single or multiple dielectric disks that should be transparent to the propagating wave and simultaneously be an efficient barrier for any gas leakage. The most frequently used materials in the industry for dielectric windows are Teflon fiberglass, Kapton, and Quartz. In today’s whitepaper, we will focus on a newly developed high-power wideband double-ridge waveguide pressure window operating from the 2-4 GHz range.  The pressure test is carried out showing that the proposed pressure window design is suitable for pressures up to 60 psi without any significant deterioration for the double ridge waveguide windows. The double ridge high-power pressure window is designed based on the standard WRD200 waveguide dimensions, with a 2:1 bandwidth ratio.