Demonstration of a Portable HTS MMIC Microwave Receiver Front-End

• Published in: IEEE transactions on applied superconductivity Vol. 25; no. 3; pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Jia Du, Jia Wang, Ting Zhang, Dandan Bai, Guo, Yingjie Jay, Yusheng He
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Circuits; Design analysis; High-temperature superconductor; High-temperature superconductors; Josephson mixer; Microwave circuits; Microwave filters; Mini; mini cryocooler; Mixers; MMIC (circuits); MMICs; Portability; Radio frequency; receiver front-end; Receivers; Superconducting filters; Superconducting microwave devices; mini cryocooler; Josephson mixer; High-temperature superconductor; receiver front-end
• ISSN: 1051-8223; 1558-2515
• DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2014.2364917

We report the first demonstration of a portable HTS monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) receiver front-end module operating on a commercial mini cryocooler. The HTS circuit consists of a step-edge junction mixer and a number of HTS filters fabricated on a single MgO substrate. The HTS MMIC circuit is integrated with the mini cryocooler. The sample vacuum chamber, cold-head, compressor and cooling fans are all packed into one customer-designed portable box of approximately 350 mm × 350 mm × 250 mm in dimension. The HTS Josephson junction-based microwave circuit operated successfully in the cryocooler unshielded without observable performance degradation. The design and implementation of the compact unit and performance evaluation of a HTS MMIC frequency down-converter are presented.