Comparative studies of various types of transmission lines in the frequency range 70 GHz 1 THz for ITER ECE diagnostic

¹ ITER-India, Institute for Plasma Research, Bhat, Gandhinagar - 382428, India
² Homi Bhabha National Institute, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai - 400094, India
³ ITER Organization, Route de Vinon-sur-Verdon, CS 90 046, 13067 St. Paul Lez Durance Cedex, France
⁴ Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08543, USA
⁵ Institute for Fusion Studies, University of Texas at Austin, TX 78712, USA

^* Corresponding author: ravinder.kumar@iter-india.org

Published online: 25 March 2019

Abstract

In ITER, an Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic is planned to measure the electron temperature by measuring the cyclotron radiation in the frequency range of 70-1000 GHz. The cyclotron radiation is usually of low power and needs to be transported with low attenuation over a long distance of ~ 43 m, through a suitable transmission system. Pertaining to long distance, the transmission system will consist of straight waveguide sections, miter bends and waveguide joints. Low power, low loss transmission in a broadband frequency range over long distance makes the design of the transmission system challenging. To arrive at a suitable transmission system, attenuation measurements of three types of transmission lines (TLs) have been performed i.e. circular smooth walled, corrugated and dielectric coated waveguide. A polarizing Michelson interferometer based on Martin-Puplett design has been used to measure the spectrum from waveguide set ups and liquid nitrogen has been used as the black body radiation source. The measured spectrum shows atmospheric water vapour absorption lines in all types of TLs. The preliminary measurement shows that the attenuation of smooth walled waveguide is found to be comparable to corrugated waveguide up to ~ 600GHz and better than corrugated waveguide above 600 GHz for the chosen set of experimental conditions. Further, to avoid water absorption lines, a smooth walled TL is evacuated up to rough vacuum (~10^-2mbar) and it was observed that the attenuation is decreased and overall transmission is improved.