Research On Temperature Rise Test Of An RF Relay

Radio Frequency(RF) relays are widely used in telecommunication industry, which play an important part on the control, regulation and protection in the lowvoltage electrical system. Due to the rapid growth of modern telecommunication systems, frequencies and powers of the signals transited are soaring, smaller and lighter design makes that the volume of the RF relay shrinks and the cooling area is reduced accordingly. However, when the relay works normally, it will generate large amount of heat and cause the temperature of the internal components to raise, which is resulting in the failure of the RF relay. In this paper, research is conducted to invest in theoretical analysis and simulation calculation of the RF relay under different high frequency signal and different ambient temperatures to work normally. Therefore, thermal analysis for the RF relay has important theoretical and practical significance.Firstly, the working principle and the internal major heat sources of the RF relay is analyzed in the paper. According to the principles of heat transfer, it studied the main way of heat transfer, and the steady state heat transfer characteristics of conditions. Besides, the paper built the solid model of the RF relay by using UG software.Secondly, the paper built the FEM models of electricity-magneto-thermal multifield by using ANSYS Workbench software, Defined the method to load boundary conditions and heat generation considering the effects of convention and radiation, calculated the steady temperature field of the RF relay under nine different high frequency signals, and simulated the steady temperature field of the RF relay under different ambient temperatures.At the end of this paper, build the RF relay temperature test system. In the test system, the T-type thermocouple has been used to measure the temperature on the several typical points of the RF relay, the temperature of the relay was practically measured and was compared with the simulation values under different high frequency signals and different ambient temperatures. The results showed that the measured and calculated values of the RF relay temperature rise were in good agreement.