The potential of superconductive electronics for EHF SATCOM terminal technologies

Abstract

Refractive superconducting materials such as niobium (T/sub c/=9 K) and niobium nitride (T/sub c/=16 K) are used in the development of electronic devices for use at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The author describes this program, and discusses the inherent advantages of superconductive electronics and the potential of the high-temperature materials for communication systems. The work concentrates on three areas: (1) the development of the components of a phased-array receiver operating in the 0.1-to-0.3 THz frequency regime; (2) research into NbN Josephson junction (JJ) technology and JJ arrays to provide the basic building blocks for a similar development in the THz regime; and (3) the development of analog and digital signal processing devices using superconducting technology.<>