This article presents a cryogenic CMOS receiver operating across 4.7–7.9 GHz for frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) quantum state readout. The designed receiver employs a double quadrature (DQ) architecture and a hybrid poly-phase filter (PPF) is proposed to achieve an impressive image rejection ratio (IRR) to meet the 99.99% higher fidelity requirements in quantum error correction (QEC). In addition, gain tuning at different stages of the low noise amplifier (LNA) facilitates a broadband gain and flatness, while the subsequent receiver chains of a broadband mixer and an improved four-input intermediate frequency amplifier (IF-AMP) provide further gain compensation. Fabricated with a standard 55-nm CMOS technology, the LNA achieves a measured power gain of 27.4 dB, with a −3-dB bandwidth (BW) of 5.2 GHz at 6 K. The measured cryogenic noise figure (NF) ranges from 0.79 to 1 dB consuming merely 5.5 mW from a 1.2-V supply. Overall receiver measurements demonstrate a peak gain of 48.2 dB, a −5-dB flatness of 3.2 GHz, and an IRR that exceeds 40 dB at 6 K. These results demonstrate the receiver’s capacity for high-fidelity qubits’ state readout.
A 4.2-to-7.4-GHz wideband cryogenic receiver is presented and implemented using a double quadrature (DQ) architecture in a 55-nm CMOS process. The proposed receiver incorporates a magnetically coupled resonator (MCR)-based low- noise amplifier (LNA) with a multi-coil input matching network, enabling ultra-low differential amplitude and phase error while achieving wideband noise matching. A hybrid poly-phase filter (PPF) is proposed as a quadrature generator to further minimize low quadrature error in the radio frequency (RF) front end. To support wide bandwidth (BW) for qubit expansion with high flatness, a gain compensation technique is implemented through the synergy of the MCR-based LNA with dual-peak tuning, a sub-1-dB ultra-flat gain mixer and an improved four-input intermediate frequency amplifier (IF-AMP) with resistance feedback structure. Measured at 6 K, the receiver achieves a maximum gain of 52 dB with a -7 dB BW of 3.2 GHz. The simulation result shows that the image rejection ratio (IRR) is above 45.4 dB at 300 K. Further measurement results will be given.
A cryogenic low-voltage, broadband low-noise amplifier(LNA) has been designed for qubit state readout systems. The proposed LNA utilizes passive components for noise cancellation. A tri-coupled transformer is utilized to simultaneously achieve broadband input impedance matching and noise matching. Additionally, it incorporates capacitive feedback and an in-phase transformer to effectively cancel noise. Implemented in 28-nm bulk CMOS technology and verified at 10 K, the LNA achieves a maximum gain of 26.7 dB, a −3-dB bandwidth of 2.2 GHz, a lowest noise temperature (NT) of 25 K, a power consumption of 4.05 mW at 0.6-V supply voltage, and a figure of merit (FoM) of 0.12 dB/mW/ph, which is comparable with the recent works.
This letter presents an ultrawideband cryogenic low-noise amplifier (LNA) with current reuse and stacked inverter-based input-referred noise (IRN) cancellation in 40-nm CMOS. The first stage utilizes an IRN reduction high-
Qgate inductor with current reuse, a stacked inverter-based shunt-resistive feedback input stage, and a cryogenically aware back-gate biasing technique to regulate the threshold voltage under cryogenic operation. The second stage is the common-source (CS) main amplifier, followed by a cascode current-reuse auxiliary amplifier to suppress the channel thermal noise of the main amplifier. The third stage is the current-reuse CS inverter-based postamplifier buffer stage. At 4 K, the LNA achieves a measured peak gain (
S21) of 37 dB, with a large 3-dB bandwidth (BW) from 0.15 to 8 GHz and aNFminof 0.4 dB at 3.2 GHz under
PDCof 13.2 mW. To our knowledge, the proposed LNA achieves the BW bandwidth and the figure of merit (FoM) among the highest compared to published CMOS LNAs operating at 4 K. The proposed LNA is suitable for both spin and superconducting qubit readout.
Cryogenic CMOS control and readout circuits tightly interfaced with the qubits have emerged as a promising solution for future quantum computers with tens-of-thousands to millions of qubits [1] –[5]. A lownoise cryo-CMOS receiver at
3−4 K integrated tightly with the lowcryogenic quantum processor can relax or even potentially eliminated the need for the HEMT LNA, and keep the whole control loop at cryogenic temperature, hence avoiding any high-speed interconnects to room temperature (Fig. 1). Additionally, wide bandwidths in the receiver enables qubit-multiplexing, where qubits can be frequency multiplexed with a spacing of
10MHz−40MHz, allowing anywhere from 10’s-100’s of qubits to be packed in to a single readout line with gigahertz-scale bandwidths. A second critical metric is power consumption, since the cooling power available in a typical dilution refrigerator is limited to a few watts at
3−4 K. Therefore, the control and readout circuits should be designed with low power consumption, projected to be
<1 mW per qubit (Fig. 1). While there has been initial progress in the design of cryo-CMOS readout systems, a leap forward is required in their overall power consumption to be viable for future quantum systems. In this work, we showcase the design and implementation of the first sub-mWper-qubit cryo-CMOS RX - a wideband, I/Q-downconversion,
4 K receiver for qubit readout that achieves
>1.9GHz of IF bandwidth with
>50 dB conversion gain and
0.7 dB NF while consuming only
17 mW of power consumption, thanks to various design techniques including near-threshold operation and low-1/f-noise passive mixers, representing
3−5× lower power consumption than prior works [2]–[3] while achieving similar noise, BW and gain performance. In addition, we demonstrate a real-time qubit read-out measurement by integrating our cryogenic-CMOS receiver with a transmon qubit.
This work presents the design and optimization of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for qubit readout in cryogenic environments of 3 − 4 K. The proposed LNA achieves wide bandwidth (4 GHz), high gain (47.0 dB), and sufficient linearity (IIP 3 = −34 dBm), while maintaining power consumption below 50 mW, making it suitable for integration into quantum computing systems. The amplifier is based on multi-stage cascode architectures with integrated inductances and impedance-matching techniques to optimize performance for a centre frequency of 5 GHz. While the results demonstrate good performance, there is still room for improvement in the S11parameter and the noise figure (NF ), which could benefit from a more refined transformer model. The proposed design represents a significant step toward integrating high-efficiency readout electronics into quantum computing architectures.