Mathematical Analysis of Electrical Breakdown Effects in Waveguides

Abstract

The designers of microwave devices in the industry use the analytical solutions of the corona discharge equation to determine the minimum power breakdown threshold, in a particular device, such as waveguides and filters, and know whether it is in the established margins. There are two main ways to determine the breakdown threshold of a waveguide analytically; the most commonly used describes the plasma density generation completely as a function of the geometry by using the characteristic diffusion length, while the second is a more thorough method that involves the use of the effective diffusion length which considers collision frequency and electric field into the equations. Hence the aim of the designers is to obtain the closest results to experimental results, both methods must be considered in addition to the environmental changes so that they know the operational limits. This chapter describes the different methods to obtain analytical results for the breakdown threshold in any rectangular waveguide device, the influence of environmental conditions in the analysis and the inhomogeneous electric field effect inside the devices.