Cavity magnetron

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"Magnetron" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Megatron, Metatron, or
Magneton (disambiguation).

Magnetron with section removed to exhibit the cavities. The cathode in the center
is not visible. The waveguide emitting microwaves is at the left. The magnet
producing a field parallel to the long axis of the device is not shown.

A similar magnetron with a different section removed. Central cathode is visible;

antenna conducting microwaves at the top; magnet is not shown.

Obsolete 9 GHz magnetron tube and magnets from a Soviet aircraft radar. The tube is
embraced between the poles of two horseshoe-shaped alnico magnets (top, bottom),
which create a magnetic field along the axis of the tube. The microwaves are
emitted from the waveguide aperture (top) which in use is attached to a waveguide
conducting the microwaves to the radar antenna. Modern tubes use rare earth magnets
which are much less bulky.
The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using
the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field while moving past a
series of open metal cavities (cavity resonators). Electrons pass by the openings
to these cavities and cause radio waves to oscillate within, similar to the way a
whistle produces a tone when excited by an air stream blown past its opening. The
frequency of the microwaves produced, the resonant frequency, is determined by the
cavities' physical dimensions. Unlike other vacuum tubes such as a klystron or a
traveling-wave tube (TWT), the magnetron cannot function as an amplifier in order
to increase the intensity of an applied microwave signal; the magnetron serves
solely as an oscillator, generating a microwave signal from direct current
electricity supplied to the vacuum tube.

An early form of magnetron was invented by H. Gerdien in 1910.[1] Another form of

magnetron tube, the split-anode magnetron, was invented by Albert Hull of General
Electric Research Laboratory in 1920, but it achieved only a frequency of 30 kHz.
[2] Similar devices were experimented with by many teams through the 1920s and
1930s. Hans Erich Hollmann filed a patent on a design similar to the modern tube in
1935,[3] but the more stable klystron was preferred for most German radars during
World War II. An important advance was the multi-cavity magnetron, first proposed
in 1934 by A. L. Samuel of Bell Telephone Laboratories. However, the first truly
successful example was developed by Aleksereff and Malearoff in USSR in 1936, which
achieved 300 watts at 3 GHz (10 cm wavelength).[2]

The cavity magnetron was radically improved by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940
at the University of Birmingham, England.[4] They invented a valve that could
produce multi-kilowatt pulses at 10 cm wavelength, an unprecedented invention.[5]
The high power of pulses from their device made centimeter-band radar practical for
the Allies of World War II, with shorter wavelength radars allowing detection of
smaller objects from smaller antennas. The compact cavity magnetron tube
drastically reduced the size of radar sets[6] so that they could be more easily
installed in night-fighter aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft[7] and escort ships.
[6]

At the same time, Yoji Ito in Japan was experimenting with magnetrons, and proposed
a system of collision avoidance using FM. Only low power was achieved. Ito then
traveled to Germany, where he had earlier received his doctorate, and found the
Germans were using pulse modulation at VHF with great success. When he returned to
Japan, he produced a prototype pulse magnetron with 2 kW in October 1941. This was
then widely deployed.[8]
In the post-war era the magnetron became less widely used in the radar role. This
was because the magnetron's output changes from pulse to pulse, both in frequency
and phase. This makes the signal unsuitable for pulse-to-pulse comparisons, which
is widely used for detecting and removing "clutter" from the radar display.[9] The
magnetron remains in use in some radars, but has become much more common as a low-
cost microwave source for microwave ovens. In this form, approximately one billion
magnetrons are in use today.[9][10]