A circulator is a 3 or 4 port non-reciprocal, Ferro-magnetic, device which transfers the power to other adjacent ports as per the circuitry design.
Circulators allow high power flow which is the microwave energy, only in one direction within the RF circuit. Such circulators can have isolation ratings ranging from 16dB to 22dB.
When one of the 3 or 4 ports is terminated-matched condition-the other ports become isolated in the reverse direction. Therefore and isolator is a circulator with matched terminations.
Circulator high power is made out of ferrite material that exhibits low insertion loss, low power dissipation and high power handling capacity. However, it has several drawbacks such as relatively small bandwidth.
Circulator high power capacity has been used in the microwave and millimeter-wave systems to de-couple the transmitted and received signals. In a continuous wave (CW) radar system, the high-power circulators work as diplexer allowing the transmitter and the receiver to share the same antenna.
There are different types of circulator high power devices, but the popular ones are:
- – High-power drop-in circulator-suitable for VHF to Ku Band @ Kilowatt power
- – The UHF circulators-low-loss circulators with efficient heat transfer.
- – Circulator high power in coaxial and waveguide formats for different circuit designs.
- – High power broadband ferrite circulator-used for air traffic surveillance.
Raditek offersthe widest range of Circulator high power devices available in the electronic industry see the Raditek website.