Commissioning of the First Klystron-Based X-Band Power Source at CERN

A new klystron based X-band rf power source operating at 11.994 GHz has been installed and started to be commissioned at CERN in collaboration with CEA Saclay and SLAC for CLIC accelerating structure tests. The system comprises a solid state high voltage modulator, an XL5 klystron developed by SLAC, a cavity based SLED type pulse compressor, the necessary low level rf system including rf diagnostics and interlocks and the surrounding vacuum, cooling and controls infrastructure. The system is designed to produce up to 50 MW rf pulses of 1500 ns pulse width and 50 Hz repetition rate. After pulse compression, up to 100 MW of rf power at 250 ns pulse width will be available in the structure test bunker. This paper describes in more detail this setup and the process of commissioning which is necessary to arrive at the design performance.