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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES 1

Method for Synthesis of Mode Converter

for Gyrotron by the NURBS Technique
Xinhua Yu, Jiliang Deng, Weiping Cao, Simin Li, Xi Gao, and Yannan Jiang

Abstract—A method for synthesis of – waveguide losses requires that these converters must be oversized (trans-
mode converters is proposed based on the non-uniform rational verse dimensions should be more than several times of the free-
B-spline technique. An application of the method to a 30.5-GHz space wavelength). The – mode converter has a ser-
serpentine circular waveguide converter of – mode
is given. The serpentine circular waveguide synthesized by the pentine axial profile and a constant radius. Limitations on phys-
method has coaxial-parallel input and output ports and smooth ical length, coaxial connection applications, and mode purity
axial curvature distribution, as well as short length and high (good spurious mode suppression) usually dictate careful design
conversion. The method offers good solutions to the problems of of the converter's axial profile. Such a profile is an analytical
the mode converter design in the situation where two successive [2]–[4] or a non-analytical [5] type. The analytical one is long
waveguides are asked to fit together strictly.
or not very high in conversion efficiency. The non-analytical
Index Terms—Coaxial-parallel terminals, gyrotron, mode con- one has advantages of shorter length and much higher mode pu-
verter design, non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) technique. rity over the analytical one. Denisov et al. proposed an iterative
method for synthesis of such waveguide mode converters in [5].
Their – mode converter design has short length and
I. INTRODUCTION high conversion efficiency; however, the two ends of its axial
profile are not at the same lateral position, which results in the
two ports of the waveguide not being at the same transversal

A NUMBER of superconducting electron cyclotron reso-

nance (ECR) ion sources use gyrotrons (their outputs are
one or more circular modes) for ECR heating [1]. The
position. This situation is unfit for strict coaxial applications.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a method based on the
non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) technique [6] for syn-
circular modes from these gyrotrons, however, are unsuitable thesis of – circular waveguide mode converters used
for direct application to ECR heating because their doughnut- in strict coaxial situations.
shaped radiation pattern with a boresight null. The linearly po- In this paper, Section II describes the generation of specific
larized Gaussian-like mode, whose radiation pattern is curve by the NURBS technique. The physical model of the
an axisymmetric, narrow pencil-like beam, is perfect for ECR mode conversion, leading to the resolution of a set of differ-
heating. Thus, a – mode converter is needed because ential equations, is presented in Section III. Section IV presents
the mode is transformed from the mode [2]–[4]. the techniques used to optimize the shape with regard to the con-
Consideration of avoiding breakdowns and minimizing ohmic version efficiency. The main ideas are: 1) the NURBS represen-
tation of the axial profile; 2) conservative Runge–Kutta scheme
to solve the differential system; 3) cost function taking into ac-
Manuscript received August 25, 2014; revised November 11, 2014 and
December 03, 2014; accepted December 22, 2014. This work was supported
count the conversion efficiency and other parameters; and 4) the
in part by the National Natural Science Fund Committee of China under Grant Nelder–Mead simplex optimization algorithm [7] employed to
61161002, Grant 61361005, and Grant 61461016, in part by the Guangxi find the optimal axial profile. Section V discusses fabrication.
Natural Science Fund of China under Grant 2012GXNSFAA053233and
Grant 2014GXNSFAA118283, in part by the Technology on Information
Tests of the converter are shown in Section VI. Conclusions are
Transmission and Dissemination in Communication Networks Laboratory summarized in Section VII.
under Grant ITD-U1300 x/K13600xx, and in part by the Graduate Innovation
Projects founded by the Guilin University of Electronic Technology under
Grant GDYCSZ201463.
X. Yu, J. Deng, X. Gao, and Y. Jiang are with the Key Laboratory of Cog- II. SPECIFIC CURVE GENERATED BY NURBS TECHNIQUE
nitive Radio and Information Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Tech-
nology (GUET), Guilin, Guangxi 541004, China (e-mail: [email protected]; In order to get a smooth-curvature curve with position of its
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]).
W. Cao is with the Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information Pro- two terminals being at a same line and normal to its two ends
cessing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology (GUET), Guilin, Guangxi being parallel, we employ the NURBS technique (as the wave-
541004, China, and also with the Science and Technology on Information guide guiding axial).
Transmission and Dissemination in Communication Networks Laboratory,
Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050081, China (e-mail: [email protected]). A th-degree NURBS curve is defined by
S. Li is with the School of Electricity Information Engineering, Guangxi Uni-
versity of Science and Technology (GUET), Liuzhou, Guangxi 545006, China
(e-mail: [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online (1)
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2014.2387062

0018-9480 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

where are the control points, are the weights, and For TM modes,
are the th-degree B-spline basis functions defined
on the non-periodic knot vector
(7)

(2) For TE modes,

and that for all . , . (8)

From the NURBS theory [5], there is a unique NURBS func-
tion of time continuation , which where is the radius of the waveguide; and represent
satisfies the boundary conditions the wave impedance and the wavelength of free space, respec-
tively; is the resistivity of the material of the waveguide, and
(3) is the th nonzero root of the th-order Bessel function
(for modes) or of the derivative of the th-order Bessel
(4) function (for modes).
Moreover, built in a curve coordinate system is not conve-
where (3) and (4) can be realized by coordinates of the starting
nient for calculation. We set the axial profile be defined in the
and ending two control points being the same values. Herein, we
– – coordinates by
will construct a curve with two ends being at the axial and the
derivatives of the curve at the two ends to being zero. This (9)
requires that the control points' serial looks like
because

(5)

III. ANALYSIS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC CHARACTERISTIC

IN SERPENTINE CONVERTER (10)
The way to couple modes with different azimuth indices
(such as the mode and the mode) is the use of a Equation (6) then becomes in the – – coordinates
so-called “serpentine” converter. For such a component, the ra-
dius remains constant, but the axis of propagation is deformed.
A waveguide with its axis perturbations will cause energy
coupling between different propagation modes and thus creates (11)
mode conversions. Mode conversion by the axial curvature in
circular waveguides has been studied in [8]. The input th Supposing the longitudinal length of a mode converter is ,
mode converts to mode only when equals and there is an incident wave (its power and also its am-
1. These mode conversions can be analyzed by the coupled plitude being normalized to a unit) at its input terminal. More-
mode equations for a circular waveguide structure with its axis over, the backward waves are not considered here because of
being waved in one plane. The equations under the overmoded the overmoded situation. One can get an initial condition based
conditions are [8] on the condition above,

(6) (12)

Equations (11) and (12) form a problem of initial condition

where lies at the axis curve, represents the complex am- of a coupled-wave differential equation groups. The solution to
plitude of the forward wave of the mode, is the problem will reveal a revolution of via .
the coupling coefficient [8] between the th mode and
mode whose directions of propagation are the forward; IV. CALCULATIONS
is the propagation constant of the th mode As an application of the method proposed, a serpentine mode
with being the axial phase-shift constant and being converter with a constant radius of 16 mm will be designed and
the axial attenuation constant. is expected to convert the mode to the mode effi-
The expressions of attenuation constant for circular ciently at 30.5 GHz. The task here is to get a proper axis pro-
waveguides are as follows [9] file meeting the coaxial application and make the designed con-
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YU et al.: METHOD FOR SYNTHESIS OF – MODE CONVERTER FOR GYROTRON BY NURBS TECHNIQUE 3

verter having an optimizing conversion from the mode

into the mode.
The initial -direction length of the converter is 3 beating-
wave length and the initial control points, whose number is 20,
lies in a cosine curve with its period being one-third of the
beating-wave length between the and modes. More-
over, a penalizing cost function is introduced to ensure the cur-
vature radium to be larger than the waveguide radius
in order to satisfy the machinery process.
The curvature radius [10] is

(13)

Fig. 1. Axial profile of the designed mode converter (the predicted directions
of the - and -plane of the output filed of the converter are indicated with
The cost function is text).

(14)

where the function is defined by

(15)

The value of must be chosen large enough to ensure all the

curvature radii larger than at any points of the optimized
axial profile.
The Nelder–Mead simplex optimization algorithm [7] is
taken to obtain the optimal control points and the optimal
length of the waveguide. The highest conversion from the
mode to the mode is set as the optimized object under the Fig. 2. Calculated fractional power along length of the designed converter (the
total power of all waves is equal to 100).
cost function being considered. Each time a serial of control
points and a length is given by the optimization algorithm, teristic of the – mode converter [4]) when the con-
an axial position distribution along abscissa is given by verting efficiency is over 95%. The bandwidth behavior is in
the NURBS theory and then the mode amplitudes considered good agreement with the fractional power where is the
in the waveguide are obtained by solution to the problem of transmission -parameter from to mode simulated
the initial condition formed by (11) and (12). Based on the by the commercial software CST Microwave Studio. The sim-
calculating method above, a set of codes is written to work ulated distributions (by the software CST) of the electric fields
out the optimal geometry of a mode converter at both of the input and output ports of the converter are also
to realize the highest conversion from the to the shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively. Fig. 4(b) indicates a
mode. The codes can also reveal the amplitudes and power good mode pattern. Furthermore, the waving directions
distributions of the modes considered along the -axis during of the guiding axis are indicated with a double-arrow line in
the optimizing process. Fourteen coupled modes were included Fig. 4(b).
in the theoretical analysis: , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , and V. FABRICATION
. The coupling to the other higher order modes proved to Drawing of the optimal design of the – mode con-
be quite negligible. verter is given in Fig. 5. The dashed line and the solid lines in
After the optimal profile is obtained, we calculate relative the drawing indicate the guiding axis and the wall of the mode
power distribution of interesting modes along the -axis and that converter design, respectively. The optimal design of the mode
of the mode at the ending port within a frequency band. converter was fabricated in two half parts by a numerical con-
Plotted in Fig. 1 is the optimum axis profile, which waves along trol machine tool. A photograph of these two parts is given in
its path length in the – -plane. Some of the relative power of Fig. 6, and Fig. 7 shows a photograph of the converter assem-
the considered modes along the -axis are given in Fig. 2. From bled from these two parts.
Fig. 2, it is seen that the mode is transformed into the
mode with an efficiency more than 99.13%. Fig. 3 illustrates the VI. LOW-POWER TEST
-mode fractional power versus frequency at the end port. A photograph of the measurement system was given in
From the figure, one can see that the bandwidth is about 6.5% Fig. 8. In the figure, key parts of the measurement setup are in-
(such a narrow conversion bandwidth is an inherently charac- dicated by white capital letters A, B, C, and D, which represent
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

Fig. 8. Scenario of the low-power test. Letter A indicates a mode gen-

erator, B indicates the -to- mode converter, C indicates a radiation
horn, and D indicates the signal detector system.

Fig. 3. Calculation and simulation of outputted mode power as a func-

tion of frequency.

Fig. 4. Simulation of the electric field distributions on the input and output
ports of the converter by the software CST. (a) Port . (b) Port .

Fig. 5. Drawing of the mode converter. Solid lines and dashed line indicate the
wall and the guiding axis of the mode converter design, respectively.

Fig. 9. Measured - and -plane far-field radiation patterns (low-power mea-

surement) of the output of the mode converter. (a) -plane. (b) -plane.

converter fabricated, and a conical horn, which acts as a signal

transmitter and signal detecting system, respectively. More-
over, all of the components above are fixed on an azimuthally
rotatable platform. In the test, the mode generator is fed
Fig. 6. Photograph of two half parts of the converter fabricated.
through a coaxial line by an analog signal generator, which
outputs the coaxial TEM mode power. Output of the port
of the – mode converter is fed to the conical horn,
which transmits the power outside. Patterns generated by the
conical horn are detected and recorded by the signal detecting
system while the rotatable platform rotates azimuthally. These
patterns are shown in Fig. 9 in which (a) and (b) indicate power
patterns of the - and -plane as a function of scanning time,
Fig. 7. Photograph of the converter assembled from these two half parts. respectively.
From Fig. 9, one can learn that the output mode is of the good
a circular waveguide mode generator, which transforms type [4]. This result is in agreement with the simulation
a coaxial TEM mode into a mode, the – mode in Fig. 4(b).
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YU et al.: METHOD FOR SYNTHESIS OF – MODE CONVERTER FOR GYROTRON BY NURBS TECHNIQUE 5

VII. CONCLUSION Weiping Cao received the B.S. degree from Hunan
Normal University, Hunan Province, China, in 1995,
This paper has proposed a method to design the – and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electromagnetic
mode converter suitable to be used in strict coaxial situations. field and microwave technology from the University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China
As an example, a 30.5-GHz mode converter is (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2003 and 2012,
designed and tested. The test is in agreement with the theoretical respectively.
predictions. From 1999 to 2002, he was an Assistant Professor
with the Millimeter Wave Laboratory, 10th Research
Institute, China Electroincs Technology Group Cor-
poration (CETC). From 2010 to 2011, he was a Vis-
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Xinhua Yu was born in Henan Province, China, in Xi Gao was born in Hunan Province, China, in Oc-
August 1969. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees tober 1976. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in physical electronics from the University of Elec- from the University of Electronic Science and Tech-
tronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), nology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, in 2006 and
Chengdu, China, in 2005 and 2010, respectively. 2009, respectively.
In 2010, he joined the Antenna and RF Center Since 2010, he has been with the Guilin University
Group, School of Information and Communication, of Electronic Technology (GUET), Guilin, Guangxi,
Guilin University of Electronic Technology (GUET), China, where he is currently an Associate Professor.
Guilin, Guangxi, China, where he is currently an He is also a Visiting Scholar with Southeast Univer-
Associate Professor. His current research interests sity, Nanjing, China. His research interests include
include electromagnetic wave transmission lines and antennas and artificial electromagnetic materials.
microwave antennas.

Yannan Jiang was born in Henan Province, China,

Jiliang Deng was born in Guangxi Province, China, in September 1982. He received the M.S. degrees
in August 1989. He received the B.S. degree from in earth exploration and information technique from
the Guilin University of Electronic Science and Tech- the Chengdu University of Technology (CDUT),
nology, Guilin, Guangxi, China, in 2012, and is cur- Chengdu, China, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree in
rently working toward the M.S. degree at the School radio physics from Xidian University, Xi'an, China,
of Information and Communication, Guilin Univer- in 2009.
sity of Electronic Science and Technology. Since 2009, he has been an Associate Professor
In 2011, he joined the Antenna and RF Center with the School of Information and Communication,
Group, School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology (GUET),
Guilin University of Electronic Technology. His Guilin, Guangxi, China. His current research inter-
current research interests include electromagnetic ests include antennas, electromagnetic radiation and scattering, and the finite-
wave transmission and mode conversion techniques. difference time-domain (FDTD) method.