Simulation Analysis of High Power Microwave Propagation properties in a simplified plasma limiter

Abstract

With the increasing transmission power of electronic equipment, microwave breakdown during high power operation is harmful to electrical and electronic equipment and systems. Aiming at this phenomenon to be solved, this paper focuses on the high-power microwave (HPM) propagation in simplified plasma limiter. Based on the Spectral Element Time-Domain (SETD) method, a three-dimensional (3-D) multi-physics model coupling Maxwell's equations and plasma fluid equations is established to describe the operating mechanism of plasma limiters. In the simulation, the nonlinear conductivity of the dielectric is introduced into Maxwell's equations to describe the nonlinear effect. The numerical results show that the nonlinear effect of dielectric window can play a very good limiting effect, and delay microwave gas breakdown.