RF Breakdown Prevention and Testing

High power RF breakdown has continued to plague the space hardware industry. Two common forms of RF breakdown are multipactor and RF ionization, both of which can lead to catastrophic failure.

Radial Space has developed unique mitigation and test solutions to address this problem.

Identify vulnerable areas for RF breakdown in the design.
Implement RF breakdown preventative measures.
Prove the design via high sensitivity testing from sea level down to vacuum pressure.

We have numerous active and passive RF breakdown prevention and test examples in our portfolio. A few of them have been summarized below.

Reach out to Radial Space if you need help solving your RF breakdown related problems.

Known Breakdown Devices:

The Known Breakdown Device (KBD) is used to validate our instrumentation for detecting RF breakdown events.

Radial Space has developed a full range of custom KBDs at various frequencies and power levels. All of our KBDs are characterized using our unique suite of test instrumentation and tight environmental control.

Radial Space can design a KBD according to your application needs.

Photos: 2 different KBDs exhibiting RF ionization breakdown.

High Power Passive Components:

Radial Space has designed and characterized a variety of high power passive devices which are RF breakdown free. At the start of these designs, areas of RF breakdown susceptibility were exposed via analysis & test, mitigations were put in place, and the design was tested to assure RF breakdown was prevented.

>1kW, X-band custom microstrip to coaxial transition.
1kW, X-band microstrip 4-way combiner.
50W, UHF microstrip and coaxial transitions.

Photo: Custom test article exhibiting RF breakdown.

High Power Active Devices:

Radial Space has characterized a number of active devices from sea level down to vacuum pressure. RF breakdown mitigations were implemented in the surrounding circuitry and proven to work successfully via testing.

150W, X-band GaN device for space SAR.
10W, UHF GaN device for deep space communications.
250W, X-band GaN device for space SAR.

Photo: Customized RF transmitter module in vacuum collar during RF breakdown testing.