Microwave pulse compression systems using a waveguide cavity composed by an inductive iris and an H-plane T-junction with the primary arm shorted is studied using the individual components' equivalent circuits. The equivalent circuit model of the device is studied in detail and optimized design characteristics and performance figures such as the length of the waveguide cavity, the iris width, the length of the shorted arm as well as the cavity gain and leakage are calculated using closed form expressions. Based on the aforementioned analysis, an optimized design procedure is proposed. As a verification of the proposed method, a microwave pulse compressor working at 1.3 GHz is studied and then compared with the results of a full-wave three dimensional commercial electromagnetic code.