A novel power-combination method using a time-reversal pulse-compression technique

The electromagnetic time-reversal (TR) technique has the characteristics of spatiotemporal focusing in a time-reversal cavity (TRC), which can be used for pulse compression, thus forming an electromagnetic pulse with high peak power. A time-reversed pulse-compression method in a single channel has high pulse compression gain. However, single channel pulse compression can only generate limited gain. This paper proposes a novel TR power-combination method in a multichannel TRC to obtain higher peak power based on TR pulse-compression theory. First, the TR power-combination model is given, and the crosstalk properties of the associated channel and the influence of the reversal performance are studied. Then, the power-combination performances for the TR pulse compression, such as combined signal to noise ratio (SNR) and combined compression gain, are analyzed by numerical simulation and experimental methods. The results show that the proposed method has obvious advantages over pulse-compression methods using a single channel cavity, and is more convenient for power combination.