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Applied Physics Letters

Nonlinear characteristics of a superconducting receiver

M. I. Salkola

Published Dec 30, 2005• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting filter technology enables highly selective and sensitive base-station receivers for wireless communications. The performance analysis of a superconducting receiver, which is inherently a nonlinear system, is simplified by introducing the concept of an effective frequency response. With this approach, superconducting filters are shown to be ideal for applications that require steep rejection at the edges of a communication band. In contrast, filter nonlinearities decrease the order of the effective frequency response of a cascaded bandpass filter, thus reducing its stop-band rejection.

DOI
10.1063/1.2159101

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Superconducting filter technology enables highly selective and sensitive base-station receivers for wireless communications. The performance analysis of a superconducting receiver, which is inherently a nonlinear system, is simplified by introducing the concept of an effective frequency response. With this approach, superconducting filters are shown to be ideal for applications that require steep rejection at the edges of a communication band. In contrast, filter nonlinearities decrease the order of the effective frequency response of a cascaded bandpass filter, thus reducing its stop-band rejection.
Superconducting microelectronics (SME) technology has the potential of realizing very high speed digital receivers capable of performing direct digitization of radio frequency signals with very low power consumption. The SME receiver is implemented on a single chip using Niobium based low temperature superconductive (LTS) Josephson Junction (JJ) technology by HYPRES. Analogue RF filters are still required at the receiver front end and are key components of the overall superconductor digital receiver. SME receivers usually require two types of RF filters; a wideband bandpass filter and a bandstop filter (a notch filter). The notch filter is required to eliminate interference and unwanted signals in the passband. In this thesis, design of highly miniaturized lumped element wideband and bandstop filters is investigated and some challenges are addressed. The filters are fabricated by the HYPRES process and therefore can be integrated with the SME receiver on the same chip. \nIn a wideband filter, the coupling between the adjacent resonators is high. Achieving such a strong coupling is one of the challenges of designing wideband filters. The wideband filters realized with distributed elements usually suffer from very low spurious frequency. As the bandwidth of the filter becomes wider, the spurious peak of the second harmonic gets closer to the passband of the filter. In the first part of this work, the possibility of realizing lumped element superconducting bandpass filters (BPF) with a relative bandwidth of 80% is investigated. \nIn the second part of the thesis, design and realization of lumped element superconducting bandstop filters (BSF) is discussed. The challenge for designing a bandstop filter is providing a good match over a wide frequency range. So narrowband inverters cannot be used. Instead, usually λ/4 matched transmission lines provide 90° phase shift between the resonators of a notch filter. The possibility of replacing the long transmission line with other means or eliminating the inverters and using both shunt and series resonators are investigated. Having both series and shunt resonators introduces some new challenges that are addressed in the thesis and discussed thoroughly. \nA tunable notch resonator is presented. The tunability is provided by a superconducting MEMS varactor that is realized in our group by doing some post processing on the device fabricated by HYPRES. The tunability range of the device at cryogenic temperatures is investigated. A 3-pole tunable BSF is also designed that uses the same tunable resonators. The tunability of the filter is investigated through simulation.
We have studied software-defined radios (SDRs) based on superconducting devices. The increasing data rate in mobile communications will require a band-width of up to a few hundred MHz in the future. We have confirmed numerically the broad-band characteristic of oversampled analog-to-digital converters including a lowpass and bandpass modulator. Furthermore, the bandpass modulator constructed without a resistor is found to have sensitivity improved by two orders of magnitude compared to that of the lowpass modulator. This result means that the digital RF radio architecture based on a bandpass ADC is better suited for a future SDR receiver.
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.
Digital superconductor electronics has been experiencing rapid maturation with the emergence of smaller-scale, lower-cost communications applications which became the major technology drivers. These applications are primarily in the area of wireless communications, radar, and surveillance as well as in imaging and sensor systems. In these areas, the fundamental advantages of superconductivity translate into system benefits through novel Digital-RF architectures with direct digitization of wide band, high frequency radio frequency (RF) signals. At the same time the availability of relatively small 4K cryocoolers has lowered the foremost market barrier for cryogenically-cooled digital electronic systems. Recently, we have achieved a major breakthrough in the development, demonstration, and successful delivery of the cryocooled superconductor digital-RF receivers directly digitizing signals in a broad range from kilohertz to gigahertz. These essentially hybrid-technology systems combine a variety of superconductor and semiconductor technologies packaged with two-stage commercial cryocoolers: cryogenic Nb mixed-signal and digital circuits based on Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) technology, room-temperature amplifiers, FPGA processing and control circuitry. The demonstrated cryocooled digital-RF systems are the world's first and fastest directly digitizing receivers operating with live satellite signals in X-band and performing signal acquisition in HF to L-band at ∼30GHz clock frequencies.