Experimental studies on radio frequency sources for ionospheric heaters

The ionosphere plays a prominent role in the performance of critical civilian and military communication systems. The properties of the ionosphere can be affected by Ionospheric Modification (IM). The key instrument in IM research is a powerful, ground-based, high frequency source of electromagnetic waves known as a heater. Existing heaters operate with large, fixed location antenna arrays. With a mobile heater, investigators would be able to conduct IM research at different latitudes without building a costly permanent installation. For developing a mobile heater with a much smaller antenna array, a new highly efficient megawatt-class Radio Frequency (RF) source is required to reduce the overall power demands on a fully deployable system. The concept of such a source has been described previously [Beaudoin et al., J. Electromagn. Waves Appl. 31(17), 1786-1801 (2017)]. Here, experimental results using an electron beam produced by a gridded thermionic electron gun to drive an external lumped element circuit for a high efficiency RF generation are reported. The gun produces an electron beam bunched at the driving frequency with a narrow phase angle spread that is then collected by an external circuit for resonant impedance matching to the load. The results showed that effects, such as the internal resistance of the inductor and deflection of the beam electrons by the induced RF voltages on the beam collector, are important considerations to be included in the design of a practical device using this configuration for high efficiency RF generation.