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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

A single-chip dual-band switched SIS mixer

Boon-Kok Tan, G. Yassin, S. Withington

Published Jul 23, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate a new concept, where a single superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) based mixer chip is switched between two RF frequency bands. A single broadband antenna is used to couple the RF/LO signal to two SIS mixers via a power splitter and two superconducting on/off switches, forming a switching circuit. The planar on/off switches comprise a superconducting microstrip bridging two transmission lines used to alternate the RF/LO signal between the two branches of the power splitter circuit by switching the impedance of the microstrip from the superconducting to normal state, and vice versa. An important application of this dual-band design is to enable combination of adjacent observing astronomical windows into a single receiver cartridge, freeing valuable space in the receiver cabin.

DOI
10.1117/12.2058771

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We investigate a new concept, where a single superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) based mixer chip is switched between two RF frequency bands. A single broadband antenna is used to couple the RF/LO signal to two SIS mixers via a power splitter and two superconducting on/off switches, forming a switching circuit. The planar on/off switches comprise a superconducting microstrip bridging two transmission lines used to alternate the RF/LO signal between the two branches of the power splitter circuit by switching the impedance of the microstrip from the superconducting to normal state, and vice versa. An important application of this dual-band design is to enable combination of adjacent observing astronomical windows into a single receiver cartridge, freeing valuable space in the receiver cabin.
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We present the design of an integrated dual-polarisation superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer operating at ALMA Band 10 frequency range. All the RF components, including the orthomode transducer (OMT), the quadrature hybrid and the SIS mixer circuits, are designed as superconducting planar circuits to form a single planar mixer chip. The mixer circuits will be fabricated using standard thin film deposition technology on an ultra-thin silicon-on-insulator (Sol) substrate. In this paper, we discuss in detail the design of the various RF components that make up the complete dual-polarisation SIS mixer chip, and provide the predicted performance using rigorous electromagnetic modelling. The optimised designs of these components are then integrated in a superconducting quantum mixer circuit modelling (SuperMix) environment for assessing the performance of the heterodyne parameters of the mixer such as mixer gain and noise temperature.
This paper studies superconductor insulator superconductor (SIS) mixers for ALMA Band-10 project. The possible scheme of the ALMA Band-10 cartridge with balanced lens-antenna mixers is presented. The new balanced full-height waveguide SIS mixer comprises two equal mixer chips fabricated on quartz substrates. Each chip contains an RF circuit with hybrid twin-SIS junction NbTiN/Nb-AlOx-Nb/Al. The preliminary experimental study of Band-10 receiver with a double-slot antenna SIS mixer mounted with a 10-mm immersion silicon lens is done to define an optimum layout of the tuning circuit and a combination of materials leading to the best performance of the SIS mixer.
Abstract We report the design of a compact dual-polarization on-chip superconductor–insulator–superconductor receiver for array applications. The planar-circuit receiver chip is comprised of the entire radio frequency (RF) signal processing chain with three main circuit components alongside some auxiliary circuits: (1) a polarization splitting 4-probe orthomode transducer (OMT) that couples the RF and local oscillator signal from free space to the chip via a drilled feedhorn; (2) two hybrids that recombine the power of each polarization from the two sets of orthogonal OMT probes; and (3) twin-junction Nb/AlOx/Nb mixers that downconvert the recombined signals to the intermediate frequency. We ensure that the four side walls of each pixel are free from obscuration, using only the top and bottom of the pixel for various connections. Consequently, the design is extendable to a large format array. In this paper, we present the detailed design of the on-chip receiver, including extensive heterodyne simulations and its potential extension into a large format array.
The Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) is a 12 m antenna operating at the Atacama Desert on the Chilean Andes at about 5000 m altitude. APEX would be equipped with a suit of single-pixel heterodyne receivers covering 211 - 1500 GHz frequency range. We present here a design of a sideband-separating superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer for the APEX, receiver Band 3, operating in 385 - 500 GHz band. The receiver uses quadrature scheme with the RF signal passing via a 90-degree waveguide 3 dB hybrid and the LO is divided by a waveguide E-plane Y-junction. The outputs of the waveguide hybrid are coupled to the mixer SIS junctions through an E-probe with integrated bias-T. For the LO coupler, conventional branch waveguide couplers are difficult to manufacture at this high frequency with required accuracy as the branch waveguides become extremely narrow. In order to solve this problem, we propose an on-chip LO injection, where the LO coupler is integrated onto the mixer chip and fabricated together with the SIS junction and the tuning circuitry. The on-chip LO coupler is made of superconducting lines, which gives almost a lossless solution and provides fabrication accuracy better than 0.5 μm by using optical lithography only. Furthermore, the mixer design includes a novel component, an ellipse termination for the idle LO port, made of thin-film resistive material with sheet resistance equal to the transmission line characteristic impedance, which gives very broadband performance using extremely compact area.
We report the design of a 230 GHz dual-polarization (2-pol) balanced Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) receiver that can be easily extended for large array applications. We achieve this by integrating all of the required radio frequency (RF) and local oscillator (LO) components on-chip using planar superconducting circuit technology, therefore simplifying the architecture of the receiver block substantially. One major feature of our design is the planar LO injection scheme, which couples the LO with a single on-chip antenna and distributes the LO power via a series of microstrip couplers to the balanced mixers of each polarization of each pixel. In this paper, we describe in detail the design and layout of the individual planar circuit components of our receiver, as well as how they are integrated to form a full receiver. We then conclude the paper with the design of a 2-pixel array demonstrator, illustrating how the balanced SIS mixer and the LO distribution network can be extended to form an even larger array.