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posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 27 2015, @03:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the my-vacuum-has-a-bag-not-a-tube dept.

More than a half century later, traveling-wave-tube amplifiers still dominate satellite communication. That's right—your ultrahigh-definition satellite TV and satellite radio come to you courtesy of vacuum tubes in space.

Of course, there's a huge difference between Telstar's 3.5-watt, 4-gigahertz amplifier and one of the dozens of highly efficient microwave amplifiers on, say, the DirecTV-15 satellite, launched earlier this year. The latest generation of traveling-wave tubes can provide up to 180 W at frequencies up to 22 GHz, with efficiencies approaching 70 percent and rated lifetimes exceeding 15 years. Though their basic function is the same—amplifying RF signals—just about everything else has changed: the design, the testing, the materials, and the fabrication.
...
And now, ongoing research into a new and potentially revolutionary kind of traveling-wave tube—the ultracompact and ultraefficient cold-cathode TWT—looks poised to deliver the first practical device by the end of this decade. These are exciting times for vacuum tubes. Here's why.

No cheating this time--read the article to find out why.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @09:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @09:50PM (#268822)

    "digital" singles [...] analog single

    I'll take 5 of each please.

    s/single/signal

    -- gewg_