Video

Walk Around Video Tour of Empower RF’s Liquid Cooled 30kW C Band Pulsed SSPA

Combining an array of 12 amplifiers, the scalable and liquid cooled Model 2247 is a 30kW peak pulsed transmitter capable of long and short pulses between 5.4 and 5.9GHz. Designed for mission critical applications, the 2247 continues to stay on air with maximum available power in the event of component, power supply or amplifier drawer failure. Featuring a modular and distributed architecture, there is no single point of power supply or RF failure and availability is maximized. Servicing is easy, from the front. With no cabling to disconnect, the transmitter allows Fast Field Replacement (FFR) of any drawer, hot or muted swapping (depending on options). In both cases the MTTR is less than 15 minutes. The result is a system with extreme Effective MTBF and maximum availability.

Software Features & Capabilities Overview of Gen3 Liquid Cooled RF Amplifier System

An overview of the GUI for Empower RF’s Model 2244, a pulse high power liquid cooled amplifier. The local and remote interfaces are the same and shown in this live demo. Parameters covered are Input and output RF monitoring, setting power levels, blanking, faults/alarms, system balance/unbalance, VSWR and reverse power. Systems that include output switching such as baseball switch feeding a dummy load is shown as well.

Empower RF Gen3 Amplifier System - Demonstration of PA Field Replaceable Feature

Fast Field Replacement (FFR) of an amplifier booster module in Empower’s liquid cooled scalable architecture is a significant capability for mission critical applications with the added benefit of lowering service and spares cost. The video you are watching demonstrates the ease and speed of replacing a faulty booster while the amplifier is transmitting. The amplifier booster modules are removed from the front, no access to the rear is required. Blind mate electrical connections and dripless cooling manifold connections on the rack backplane make this possible. Shown is the model 2244 – Pulsed 8KW L band, 1 to 1.4GHz with up to 500 usec pulse widths and 20% duty cycles.

Pulse Droop Correction Demonstration

This video describes and demonstrates Pulse Droop correction on a C band long duty cycle SSPA. This is a technology developed at Empower RF Systems and enabled by the computational power and very high speed data rates we build into our newest generation of amplifiers.

Benefits of this technological advancement:

• Improves Radar Detection in Noisy Environments
• Extends Radar Effective Range
• Simplifies receiver algorithms yielding faster pulse detection
• All resulting in earlier target acquisition and identification

Empower RF Systems EW Overview

Jon Jacocks describes Empowers pedigree and product portfolio in detail. Product configurations include modules, air cooled systems, liquid cooled transmitters, and custom designs at various levels of integration. Output Power ranges from 10’s of watts to 100’s of KW, CW & Pulsed, HF to X band.

• Modules at :30
• Air Cooled HPA’s (CW & Pulsed) at 1:35
• Liquid Cooled Transmitters at 3:42

Smart RF Amplifier can simplify your system hardware and software development

Jon Jacocks, Empower RF CEO, discusses the topic of simplifying your test setup with a smart amplifier. It’s common for integrators to build their own feedback control system around the standard RF amplifier. The typical setup includes external dual directional coupler, power sensors, power meter, signal generator, and PC running either your own custom code or heavily customized Matlab or Labview coding. Besides this approach being a very slow feedback control loop, the cost of system engineering and coding is high and the development time lengthens project schedules. Jon presents this topic and how a Smart amplifier can simplify your system hardware and software development.

A Modern Solid State Architecture for Very High Power Applications

Watch this in depth 30 minute video presentation describing a modern architecture and its benefits for implementing RF & microwave SSPAs in the tens and hundreds of kilowatts. Scalability of a modular design that is repeatable and deterministic is covered. MTBF's and reliability vs. traditional SSPA and tube technologies is discussed. The “Always on air” concept with hot swapping is discussed as are the Implications to total mission cost and effectiveness for critical high power applications. Empower’s CTO, Paulo Correa, discusses some of the more technical subject matter in the topics below:

• Modern Architecture – High Level Description
• Major System Elements
• The RF Drawer - aka Booster
• Digital Features in the Amplifier
• Combining Considerations
• Scalability Described
• Availability Example
• Effective MTBF Calculations
• Total Cost of Ownership
• With a model vs. TWT

Pulse Shape Duplication for High Power SSPA's

High power amplifiers do a poor job duplicating the input signal without distortions. Due to the transient response of the amplifier the output will over shoot, ring and droop, introducing undesired low and high frequency components into other parts of the spectrum. Pulse shaping, as it is done today, is an effort to fix fidelity issues caused by the transmitting amplifier and is accomplished by a combination of imperfect methods, most external to the amplifier. Presented at IMS 2021, George Bollendorf explains a new approach that matches input pulse signal shape, minimizes droop, overshoot, ringing, rise and fall times.

MilSpec Amplifier Shake Test at Full Power

Watch Empower RF Systems’ COTS 5U architecture deliver a full Kilowatt while shaken at 40G at a certified MilSpec test lab. Empower has developed a virtual “connector-less” internal architecture in our Next Generation family of RF and microwave amplifiers. Because of this electro-mechanical design these COTS amplifiers find themselves fielded in some airborne platforms and many land and naval applications. If your use case isn’t as demanding you still benefit from the inherently rugged design when moving around the lab, campus, or shipping between facilities.