Varactor Tuners Eliminated an RF Amplifier
There is an urgent demand for low noise varactor tuners for use in TV receivers to meet the requirements of FCC rules. The RF amplifier has been frequently eliminated in mechanical tuners now in use, resulting in good cross-modulation characteristics and low cost. However, the elimination of the RF amplifier has not been attained in varactor tuners, because of high series resistance of varactor diodes. The series resistance of Si diodes at 470 MHz is around 0.7Ω, and is much higher than that of mechanical capacitor, 0.15Ω. To reduce the noise figure of varactor tuners, tuning diodes with low resistance, i. e. below 0.2Ω must be developed. However, few reports have been published on low series resistance diodes for UHF use.
High-Q GaAs varactor diodes
A double epitaxial gallium arsenide tuning diode has been developed for TV varactor tuners. The capacitance variation ratio is 6.0 and is large enough to cover the UHF TV broadcasting band. Diode series resistance is 0.18 Ω (Q = 200) at 470 MHz, and at a capacitance of 9 pF. This resistance is 4.4 times smaller than Si diodes in its mean value. Contribution of each resistance component to the total diode resistance was studied. The result shows that package loss is 0.11 Ω, RF skin-effect resistance is 0.05 Ω, and the undepleted epitaxial layer resistance is 0.048 Ω. Therefore, a diode with a 0.075-Ω (Q = 480) series resistance at 470 MHz could be developed, if package loss and RF skin-effect resistance are improved.
Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Transmutation of Actinides in Accelerator-Driven Assemblies
Abstract The potential impact of nuclear data uncertainties on a large number of performance parameters of reactor cores dedicated to the transmutation of radioactive wastes is discussed. An uncertainty analysis has been performed based on sensitivity theory, which underlines the cross sections, the energy range, and the isotopes that are responsible for the most significant uncertainties. To provide guidelines on priorities for new evaluations or validation experiments, required accuracies on specific nuclear data have been derived, accounting for target accuracies on major design parameters. The required accuracies (mostly in the energy region below 20 MeV), in particular for minor actinide data, are of the same order of magnitude of the achieved accuracies on major actinides. Specific requirements also concern the improvement of minor actinide data related to decay heat and effective delayed-neutron fraction assessment.