The engineering behind the RF PPU

A switch-mode amplifier wastes far less power than a linear stage, and at these frequencies that decides the thermal and mass budget. Gallium nitride switches faster than silicon and holds up better at temperature, which for an RF power stage means roughly three times the power density and lower loss, with low radiated emissions.

An RF plasma load can swing hard at ignition and reflect power into the amplifier. The usual fix is a circulator or isolator, which costs mass and volume. Our unit rides through mismatch and antenna faults with fast hardware protection instead, and spends no mass on a circulator.

We build on commercial parts with documented flight-heritage lineage, tracked through our own COTS Heritage Database. That means component traceability, no single-supplier dependency, and no ITAR or EAR obligations passed to the customer. See ITAR-free RF power processing units.

We build from the public record: the published helicon-coupling and matching literature, the EU DEEP-PPU dissemination as a COTS-plus-GaN benchmark, and space-qualified component heritage for lineage. Where we do not have flight data yet, we say so.