Development of High RF Power Solid State Amplifiers at SOLEIL

Abstract

At SOLEIL, 5 solid state amplifiers (SSA) provide the required 352 MHz CW power : 1 x 35 kW for the Booster (BO) cavity and 4 x 180 kW for the 4 superconducting cavities of the Storage Ring (SR). Based on a design fully developed in house, they consist in a combination of a large number of 330 W elementary modules (1 x 147 in the BO and 4 x 724 in the SR) with MOSFET transistors, integrated circulators and individual power supplies. After 5 years of operation, this innovative design has proved itself and demonstrated that it is an attractive alternative to the vacuum tube amplifiers, featuring an outstanding reliability and a MTBF > 1 year. In the meantime, thanks to the acquired expertise and the arrival of the 6 th generation transistors, SOLEIL has carried out developments which led to doubling the power of the elementary module (700 W @ 352 MHz & 500 MHz) while improving the performance in terms of gain, linearity, efficiency and thermal stress. This approach was also extended to frequencies from the FM to L band. The increasing interest in this technology has led SOLEIL to collaborate with several other laboratories and conclude a transfer of know-how to the French company, ELTA-AREVA.