An integrated receiver with phase-locked superconducting oscillator

Abstract

A submillimeter heterodyne spectrometer employing a superconducting local oscillator is demonstrated for the first time. The sensor chip comprises a quasioptical double-dipole lens-antenna SIS mixer (RX = 250 K at 380 GHz), a Josephson flux-flow oscillator and a SIS harmonic mixer. Room temperature PLL electronics is used with a reference source at 10 GHz. The PLL bandwidth of 10 MHz and the hold range of 3 GHz are estimated for locking at 32-th harmonic of the reference source. The spectral resolution better than 1 MHz and broadening effect of a spectral line of SO 2 gas at 326867 MHz are measured with a laboratory gas cell at 300 K at pressure 0.03-0.3 mbar using acousto-optical spectrometer.

Superconducting Integrated Receiver for TELIS

“…A key element of the 650 GHz channel is an SIR [2], [4] that comprises in one chip (size of ) a low-noise SIS mixer with quasioptical antenna and a superconducting Flux Flow Oscillator (FFO) acting as an LO [5]- [7]. The FFO is a long Josephson tunnel junction in which an applied dc magnetic field and a bias current drive a unidirectional flow of fluxons.…”

Optimization of the Phase-Locked Flux-Flow Oscillator for the submm Integrated Receiver

“…To achieve this goal a concept of the integrated receiver with phase-locked loop (PLL) has been developed [3], [4]. Following this concept a 350 GHz singlechip receiver containing a quasioptical SIS mixer, a flux flow oscillator and a harmonic SIS mixer (HM) for FFO phase locking has been designed, fabricated and successfully tested [5], [6], showing the frequency resolution of the receiver as good as 10 kHz. The effect of broadening of a spectral line of SO 2 gas at 326.867 GHz was measured by this spectrometer for a laboratory gas cell within the pressure range of 0.03-0.3 mbar demonstrating the feasibility of such device for practical applications [6].…”

“…Following this concept a 350 GHz singlechip receiver containing a quasioptical SIS mixer, a flux flow oscillator and a harmonic SIS mixer (HM) for FFO phase locking has been designed, fabricated and successfully tested [5], [6], showing the frequency resolution of the receiver as good as 10 kHz. The effect of broadening of a spectral line of SO 2 gas at 326.867 GHz was measured by this spectrometer for a laboratory gas cell within the pressure range of 0.03-0.3 mbar demonstrating the feasibility of such device for practical applications [6]. These achievements enabled the development of a 600 -650 GHz integrated receiver for the Terahertz Limb Sounder (TELIS) [7] intended for atmosphere study and scheduled to fly on a balloon in 2006.…”

Superconducting integrated on-board spectrometer of the submillimeter-wave range for atmospheric research

“…Recently, the team of the Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia) and the Space Research Organization of The Netherlands (SRON, Groningen, The Netherlands) have developed and tested a superconducting integrated receiver (SIR) of the submillimeter-wave range [1,2]. The uniqueness and novelty of the successfully realized concept [3,4] are that one microchip contains all the elements required for the superheterodyne reception of signals: an antenna, a mixer based on the superconductor-insulatorsuperconductor (SIS) structure, a superconducting local oscillator, and all matching structures. Only some of the elements of the phase-locked loop (PLL) and some amplifiers of the intermediate-frequency channel are removed from the cryostat and operate at room temperature.…”

“…The integral noise temperature of the receiver based on the Nb/AlN/NbN junctions with matching Nb structures, measured in the doublesideband regime across the entire band of intermediate frequencies(4)(5)(6)(7)(8).…”