Basic pulse forming circuit
Basic pulse forming circuit

The basic Pulse Forming Transmission Line (PFL) consists of a charged line and a switch. It delivers a formed pulse as opposed to a simple exponential decay from a capacitor discharge. The main point to note is that the output voltage into a matched load is half the charging voltage. In high voltage circuits this is a drawback as considerable effort may be required to make the circuit work at the higher voltage.

for ZL=Z0 v = velocity in line

 

for ZL>Z0
 

 

for ZL< Z0