A High-gain nanosecond pulse generator based on inductor energy storage and
pulse forming line voltage superposition
Jianhao Ma, Shoulong Dong, Hongmei Liu,Liang Yu, Chenguo Yao
State Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment & System Security and New Technology (Chongqing
University) Shapingba District, 400044, Chongqing, China
Abstract
Pulsed gas discharge is an important means of
generating low temperature plasma. Short pulses with fast
frontier show superior performance in terms of increasing
the active particle content, ionization coefficient and
electron conversion rate due to its higher voltage rise rate.
The common nanosecond pulse generator is based on
capacitive energy storage. Compared with the nanosecond
pulse generator based on capacitive energy storage, the
inductive energy storage has outstanding advantages in
energy storage density, miniaturization of the device, and
less influence of loop inductance. However, the inductive
energy storage also suffers from problems such as
limitation of disconnect switch, uncontrollable outputs
and waveform distortion. In this paper, the inductance
unit in the transmission line is used as the energy storage
inductance, and combined with the characteristics of the
rectangular pulse output of the transmission line, and the
modular voltage superposition is carried out by using the
propagation delay of electromagnetic wave in the
transmission line to achieve high-gain rectangular
nanosecond pulse output. Then we expand the design of
the terminal superposition structure, optimize the
magnetic field distribution between the lines to reduce the
waveform distortion, and output the nanosecond short
pulse. Finally, the paper analyzes the load matching
characteristics of the designed pulse generator and
provides experimental support for the actual application
of the generator. In this paper, the superposition
experiment of 10-stage inductive energy storage modules
was carried out. The experimental results show that the
time-delay isolation method of transmission line can
effectively isolate the pulse voltage at the front and rear.
The volume of the 10-stage circuit module is 25 cm*6
cm*12 cm, rectangular waveform output, the charging
voltage is DC 58 V, the voltage amplitude is 8.2 kV, the
voltage gain is about 140 times, the pulse duration is 23
ns and the rise time is 8 ns.
I. Introduction
The development in civilian applications such as
plasma, environmental treatment, medical applications,
food processing, etc.,[1-3] promotes the development of
pulse power technology toward miniaturization, high

email: yu_liang@cqu.edu.cn
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frequency, high efficiency, and modularization.
Compared with the capacitive energy storage technology,
the inductive energy storage technology has higher energy
storage density, and the use of inductive energy storage
makes the front charging voltage lower, so the circuit is
more compact.
Secondly, it is insensitive to the loop inductance, which
is beneficial to balance the contradiction between the peak
power of the pulse source and the rising time. However,
due to the limitation of high-speed and high-capacity
circuit breakers, and the difficulty of impedance matching
caused by simple pure inductance, waveform distortion
and low overall efficiency, the popularization of inductive
energy storage pulse sources is limited[4].
At present, how to achieve high voltage, rectangular
pulse and efficient inductive energy storage pulse
generator topology has rarely been reported. The
inductive energy storage pulse generator topology
discussed in this paper achieves voltage superposition by
time isolation, and uses the transmission pulse forming
line to ensure that it can output rectangular pulses. The
use of SiC MOSFET is beneficial to the frequency
operation, and as an inductive energy storage occurs. The
device is more suitable for the compactness and
miniaturization of the pulse generator.
II. Generator Design
A. Principle
The transmission line is an effective way to form a
rectangular pulse, and its circuit model can be equivalent
to a circuit composed of numerous tiny inductors and
capacitors. In a single transmission line  circuit based
on capacitive energy storage, the capacitance in the
transmission line is used to store the transition energy.
Therefore, it is not difficult to find that the inductance of
the transmission line can also be used as an energy
storage unit. When the impedance of the transmission line
and the load is matched, a rectangular pulse can also be
obtained. The difference from a single transmission line is
that the control switch is turned into a turn-off switch. The
basic circuit diagram is shown in Figure 1.
It is not difficult to see from Figure 1. The short end of
the transmission line is short-circuited and acts as a
storage inductor at the moment the switch is closed. After
the switch is turned off, the transmission line is used as a the pulse duration is determined by the length of the
single transmission line to form a rectangular pulse, and transmission line.

LA1 LA2 LAn LB1 LB2 LBn

RA1 RA2 RAn RB1 RB2 RBn
Udc
CA1 CA2 CAn CB1 CB2 CBn RL

M1

Figure 1. Equivalent circuit diagram

same time, thereby realizing the load end. The power is

B. Power Superposition
High voltage is the trend of pulse generator. How to
achieve high voltage is the first problem that pulse
generator needs to solve. The single-stage voltage is
limited by the rated voltage of the switch in the pulse
generator based on inductive energy storage. However,
due to its structural limitations, the power superposition
method widely used in capacitor energy storage is not
suitable for the energy storage of the inductor. Therefore,
finding a power superposition method suitable for the
structure of an inductive energy storage transmission line
is the primary problem for achieving its high voltage
output pulse.
Z11 Z21
superimposed but does not affect the insulation at the
emitter. The voltage superposition circuit based on time
isolation is shown in Figure 2.
C. Control Signal
In this paper, two circuits are designed for synchronous
triggering of signals. Figure 3a is an optical isolation
trigger circuit based on fiber isolation. Figure 4a is a
trigger circuit based on common mode inductance
isolation.

Udc

M1

Z12 Z22

Udc

M1

RL

Z1n-1 Z2n-2

Udc

M1

Z1n Z2n
(a) Modular Optical Fiber Isolation
Udc

M1

Figure 2. Topology of the generator

If he pulse propagation time on the transmission line is
greater than the pulse duration, the head and tail of the
transmission line form a low voltage period for a certain
period of time. At this point, the single-stage circuit forms
a temporal pulse isolation across the input and output.
Based on this principle, we add a delay transmission line
to each module to isolate the pulse from the transmitter (b) Waveform of Modular Optical Fiber Isolation
and the load. And through delay compensation, the Figure 3. Control Section of Modular Optical Fiber
control delay pulse is finally concentrated at a load at the Isolation

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(a) Common-mode Inductance Isolation
(b) Waveform of Common-mode Inductance Isolation
Figure 4. Control Section of Common-mode Inductance
Isolation
In the case of DC, both circuits are common ground.
The experimental results in Figure 3b and Figure 4b show
that the circuit based on common mode inductance
isolation has lower time dispersion, and finally the power
triggering circuit based on common mode inductance
isolation can realize the effective power superposition of
the pulse forming module.
III. Experiment
The data parameters used in the experiment are shown
in Table 1. The RG-174/U coaxial cable has a
characteristic impedance of 50Ω, a diameter of 2.8mm,
and a DC voltage of 1.4kV, of which the equivalent
capacitance is 100pF/m and the equivalent inductance is
250nH/m. This paper finally chooses CREE SiC
MOSFET (C3M0120090J) switch withstand voltage
900V, pulse current 50A, switch rise time 9ns, turn-off
time 5ns. High-bandwidth 6-GHz digital storage
oscilloscope (LeCroy, WavePro7100XL) was used to
record the output waveform, the voltage measurement
used LeCroy PPE6kV high voltage probe, the current
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measurement used CWT MiniHF-6B current coil.
Waveform Recording Use the last version of this article to
use DC power supply (JKDY300-10 Nantong Jiake Power
Supply Manufacturing Co., Ltd.), DC voltage 0~300V,
current 0~10A. Signal control is via the Tektronix Signal
Generator (AFG3102C).
(a) Generator veneer
(b) Time isolation through transmission lines
Figure 5. Generator veneer test
First, we measured the voltage at the leading and
trailing ends of the transmission line. The experimental
process and test results are shown in Figure 5. After the
pulse is formed, the transmission delay is transmitted
through the transmission line, and the same delay pulse is
tested between the tail pulse and the head end pulse,
indicating that the circuit meets the design expectation
and effectively implements pulse isolation. It can be used
in a power stacking structure to generate high voltage
pulses. At the same time, we also measured the charging
process current through the 5-level test circuit. As shown
in Figure 6, the switch conduction time is 2us, the
charging current reaches 40A, and the output voltage
reaches about 5kV.
 Figure 6. Generator charging current test

On this basis, this paper builds a 10-level experimental

circuit as shown in Figure 7a. Through the superimposed
experimental results shown in Figure 7b, the output pulse
width is 23 ns. It is due to the increase in the number of
stages and the partial dispersion of system
synchronization. At the same time, the voltage is 8.9kV,
which also indicates that the efficiency of power
superposition is lower than that of level 5, which is also a
problem we need to solve later. However, under the 10-
level condition, the front-end charging voltage is only
56V, and the voltage gain has reached 158 times.
IV. Conclusion
In this paper, a nanosecond pulse circuit based on
inductive energy storage pulse forming line structure is
designed. Through the coaxial cable's own inductance as
the energy storage inductance and pulse forming line, the
rectangular pulse output is realized and the power
superposition is realized by the superposition method
based on the transmission line time delay isolation.
Finally, under the condition of DC charging voltage of
56V, the output voltage amplitude is 8.9kV, the voltage
gain is 158 times, the pulse width is 23ns, and the rise
time is 8.3ns.

V. Acknowledgement
This project is supported by the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities No.2019CDXYDQ-
0010、No. 2019CDJGFDQ001.

VI. REFERENCES
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