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Description
SOLEIL has pioneered the use of RF solid state power amplifiers (SSPA’s), 1 x 35 kW in its Booster and 4 x 180 kW in its Storage Ring at 352 MHz. After 11 years of operation, these SSPA's, which were developed in house, have demonstrated that they could advantageously replace the vacuum tubes in such CW application thanks in particular to their inherent modularity/redundancy, the absence of HV and their very low phase noise. Further R&D, carried out at SOLEIL, allowed improving the original design in compactness, reliability and efficiency along with the extension to other frequencies. Following the success of the SOLEIL SSPA’s, several accelerator facilities expressed their intention of adopting this technology, which led SOLEIL to share its experience in this domain through scientific collaborations and technology transfers (ESRF, LNLS, SESAME, ThomX, LUCRECE, …). Since 2014, the French company SigmaPhi Electronics is the unique SOLEIL licensee. SSPA technology has now reached maturity; in addition to SOLEIL, SSPA’s have run for more than 5 years in ESRF at 352 MHz, LNLS at 476 MHz, ELBE at 1.3 GHz, and the operational experience feedbacks are excellent. It is being adopted by many other accelerator facilities and taken up by the industry for applications ranging from the FM to L band with power from a few 10 to few 100 kW.
