Reference Standards for Multipactor Validation

Multipactor events pose a serious risk to high and medium-power microwave electronics, particularly in space-borne applications. While testing standards have been developed by the satellite community, the difficulty of predicting multipactor in the presence of complex geometries, materials, and RF signals has led to the use of large safety margins, greatly increasing the cost of fielded systems.

As part of a broader multipactor-focused Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI), the University of Michigan is developing a test cell reference standard to foster comparisons of multipactor mitigation techniques across multiple research institutions. Similar experimental platform standards have been applied to R&D efforts in other fields, allowing researchers to more easily make direct comparisons between their results. The development of a planar test standard for multipactor should bring similar benefits. We will report on the design of the test standard, as well as additional progress in the analysis of multipactor in coaxial geometries.