Superconducting Bandpass Modulator With 2.23-GHz Center Frequency and 42.6-GHz Sampling Rate

This paper presents a superconducting bandpass modulator for direct analog-to-digital conversion of radio frequency signals in the gigahertz range. The design, based on a 2.23-GHz microstrip resonator and a single flux quantum comparator, exploits several advantages of superconducting electronics: the high quality factor of resonators, the fast switching speed of the Josephson junction, natural quantization of voltage pulses, and high circuit sensitivity. The modulator test chip includes an integrated acquisition memory for capturing output data at sampling rates up to 45 GHz. The small size (256 b) of the acquisition memory limits the frequency resolution of spectra based on standard fast Fourier transforms. Output spectra with enhanced resolution are obtained with a segmented correlation method. At a 42.6-GHz sampling rate, the measured SNR is 49 dB over a 20.8-MHz bandwidth, and a full-scale (FS) input is 17.4 dBm. At a 40.2-GHz sampling rate, the measured in-band noise is 57 dBFS over a 19.6-MHz bandwidth. The modulator test chip contains 4065 Josephson junctions and dissipates 1.9 mW at = 4.2 K.