Particle-in-Cell Modeling of Oven Magnetron: A Review

The conventional microwave oven with the 2.45 GHz “cooker” magnetron producing output microwave power of 0.7-1.0 kW has become de-facto one of the “must-have” from the long line of different kitchen appliances available for everyday use in every single US home or office. A problem has arisen, however, during the last 10 years with the rise of numerous wireless systems, most notable of which is the IEEE 802.11/WiFi system, operating at the same frequency 2.45 GHz in a close proximity to the working microwave oven. The problem is called the Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) and it is making life really complicated for nearby wireless computer networks and numerous home/office wireless devices. One of the possible solutions of the EMI problem is to redesign the “cooker” magnetron to operate at the frequency located at the outer edge of the Wi-Fi spectrum, 2.48 GHz for example. The paper describes how the modern computer particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a conventional double-strapped ten-cavity non-relativistic magnetron may help one to design and build the new 2.48 GHz “cooker” magnetron with the reduced EMI problem to home/office 2.45 GHz wireless devices.