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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Superconducting delta ADC with on-chip decimation filter

Vasili K. Semenov, Y.A. Polyakov, Timur V. Filippov

Published Jun 1, 1999• 26 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Last year we presented the first fully operational superconducting Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with on-chip Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Here we review this device and introduce completed and prospective innovations required to exceed the performance of the best semiconductor counterparts. The ADC chip contains 2 basic parts: a "fundamental" ADC operating at about 20 GHz sampling rate and a digital decimation filter which attenuates high-frequency noise components and reduces the sampling rate to match it with the bandwidth of an input signal. Our short term goal is to achieve 14 bits Spurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) for 60 MHz signal bandwidth by using the standard 1000 A/cm/sup 2/ Nb-trilayer fabrication technology commercially available at HYPRES, Inc.

DOI
10.1109/77.783666

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Last year we presented the first fully operational superconducting Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with on-chip Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Here we review this device and introduce completed and prospective innovations required to exceed the performance of the best semiconductor counterparts. The ADC chip contains 2 basic parts: a "fundamental" ADC operating at about 20 GHz sampling rate and a digital decimation filter which attenuates high-frequency noise components and reduces the sampling rate to match it with the bandwidth of an input signal. Our short term goal is to achieve 14 bits Spurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) for 60 MHz signal bandwidth by using the standard 1000 A/cm/sup 2/ Nb-trilayer fabrication technology commercially available at HYPRES, Inc.
Superconductor analog-to-digital converters (ADC) offer high sensitivity and large dynamic range. We report recent advances in the low-pass phase-modulation-demodulation (PMD) oversampled analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The oversampled data from the PMD front-end are passed along with sampling clock to an on-chip digital filter. In the past, the maximum frequency of operation of such chips were limited by that of the digital decimation filter (DDF) to about 30 GHz. Recently, we have designed a chip that allows the PMD front-end to be clocked twice as fast as the DDF, resulting in sampling rates of 46.08 GHz and 29.44 GHz for chips with critical current densities of 4.5 and 1 kA/cm2respectively. We have also designed a new PMD front-end, with a quarter-rate quantizer (QRQ) that allows 18-20 dB extension of dynamic range. We are also pursuing a subranging ADC design with two PMD front-ends connected with fluxon amplifier and subtractor circuitry that promises a dynamic range extension by 25-30 dB. We report signal-to-noise ratio and spur-free dynamic range measurement results for various ADC chips, and project performance for future improvements.
We have developed and verified experimentally a novel high-resolution superconducting ADC architecture based on phase modulation/demodulation principle and implemented in RSFQ logic. We have demonstrated an ADC chip providing full implementation of this architecture, including on-chip decimation filter and multiple-channel synchronizer. We have also developed a digital ADC evaluation system consisting of an interface electronics block converting the low-voltage ADC output to standard TTL form at multi-MHz sampling rate, and a computerized test station performing data acquisition, processing and display in real time. Using this system we have demonstrated that for low-frequency (kHz) signals our ADC chips possess linearity in excess of 16 bits with Spur-Free Dynamic Range over 108 dB, which is an important benchmark for any high-resolution ADC technology.
We have proposed a multi-bit sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in which a modulator is composed of a single quantizer and multiple samplers based on the single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits. The quantizer converts analog signals to pulse-density-modulated signals, and the samplers sample the modulated SFQ pulses in every sampling clock. Use of multiple samplers based on delayed-flip-flops (DFFs) increases sampling frequencies virtually, resulting in a multi-bit sigma-delta modulator. We also designed a decimation filter by using the well-established Verilog tools for the SFQ circuits and the Matlab simulator. We prepared an ADC including 4 samplers and a second-order decimation filter with the decimation rate of 1:256 based on the Nb junction technology. We confirmed correct operation of this ADC at 56 GHz clock signals generated by an internal ring oscillator. We experimentally obtained the signal-to-noise ratio of 25 dB and spurious-free dynamic range of 37 dB at the bandwidth of 10 MHz from the upper 7 bits of the outputs of the decimation filter.
A wide variety of applications, ranging from radio-frequency (RF) receivers for broadband communications and signal detection, on earth and in space, would benefit from high-performance superconductor analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), based on magnetic flux quantization and fast switching Josephson junctions. Superconductor ADCs are capable of very high sample rates (100 GHz or more), very high linearity, and high sensitivity. Nyquist-rate ADCs use the high sample rate to digitize a wide instantaneous bandwidth (tens of GHz) and are useful for wideband spectrum monitoring as well as high-end scientific instrumentation. Delta and delta-sigma oversampling ADCs use the high linearity to achieve programmable trade-off between dynamic range and instantaneous bandwidth. These lowpass and bandpass ADCs have been used for direct digitization of narrower (tens to hundreds of MHz) RF bands in the 1-20 GHz range for a variety of communications, intelligence, electronic warfare, and radar applications. Another application area of these cryogenic ADCs is for outputs of cryogenic sensor arrays and terahertz mixers. Recent advances in various classes of ADCs for different applications are described.
We describe three types of software-defined-radio (SDR) receivers based on superconducting technologies. The superconducting analog bandpass filters are essential for all types of the receivers. Another key component is an analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), which are required to have high resolution with a broad band width. The complementary A ADC based on the single-flux-quantum circuit is a promising candidate for the SDR receivers because it has a practical nature together with above-mentioned requirements. The experimentally obtained signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and sensitivity, which are closely related to the resolution, are 34 dB and 20 μA for a quarter of the full-scale input with a band width of about 20 MHz. If we use the optimum decimation filter, the ADC is expected to have the SNR of 82 dB and the sensitivity of 300 nA. These values meet the requirements of the easiest type of the SDR receiver. After new fabrication process has been introduced and the architecture of the ADC has been improved, all types of recievers could be realized based on suoerconductors.