HYPRES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N142-118

Description

The ability to capture wide instantaneous bandwidth is essential for analysis of various signals-of-interest. Superconductor analog-to-digital converters (ADC) offer discriminating advantages in both bandwidth and fidelity due to very high sampling rates and quantum-accurate digitization based on counting of magnetic flux quanta. Multiple digital-RF receiver systems incorporating superconductor ADCs have been in operation for over two years in field-ready configurations at Government laboratories, and have demonstrated direct digitization of RF signals above 20 GHz. We propose to augment the superconductor ADC technology by integrating superconductor analog band-reject filters. Our prior expertise will allow us to not only design, but to build, and demonstrate a hardware prototype of the key element of the proposed wideband receiver, the combination of tunable analog filter and ADC, during Phase I. In Phase II, we will increase the complexity of the scalable architecture developed during Phase I to build, demonstrate and deliver a wideband RF digitizer with multiple integrated tunable filters for operation and testing to a designated Government facility.