High temperature superconductor analog electronics for millimeter-wavelength communications

The performance of high temperature superconductor (HTS) passive microwave circuits up to X-band was encouraging when compared to their metallic counterparts. The extremely low surface resistance of HTS films up to about 10 GHz enables a reduction in loss by as much as 100 times compared to copper when both materials are kept at about 77 K. However, a superconductor's surface resistance varies in proportion to the frequency squared. Consequently, the potential benefit of HTS materials to millimeter-wave communications requires careful analysis. A simple ring resonator was used to evaluate microstrip losses at Ka-band. Additional promising components were investigated such as antennas and phase shifters. Prospects for HTS to favorable impact millimeter-wave communications systems are discussed

InGaAs/AlGaAsSb avalanche photodiode with high gain - bandwidth product

Increasing reliance on the Internet places greater and greater demands for high -speed optical communication systems. Increasing their data transfer rate allows more data to be transferred over existing links. With optical receivers being essential to all optical links, bandwidth performance of key components in receivers, such as avalanche photodiodes (APDs), must be improved. The APDs rely on In0.53Ga0.47As (grown lattice-matched to InP substrates) to efficiently absorb and detect the optical signals with 1310 or 1550 nm wavelength, the optimal wavelengths of operation for these optical links. Thus developing InP -compatible APDs with high gain-bandwidth product (GBP) is important to the overall effort of increasing optical links’ data transfer rate. Here we demonstrate a novel InGaAs/AlGaAsSb APD, grown on an InP substrate, with a GBP of 424 GHz, the highest value reported for InP -compatible APDs, which is clearly applicable to future optical communication systems at or above 10 Gb/s

FMCW rail-mounted SAR: Porting spotlight SAR imaging from MATLAB to FPGA

In this work, a low-cost laptop-based radar platform derived from the MIT open courseware has been implemented. It can perform ranging, Doppler measurement and SAR imaging using MATLAB as the processor. In this work, porting the signal processing algorithms onto a FPGA platform will be addressed as well as differences between results obtained using MATLAB and those obtained using the FPGA platform. The target FPGA platforms were a Virtex6 DSP kit and Spartan3A starter kit, the latter was also low-cost to further reduce the cost for students to access radar technology

A Wideband Beam Forming Antenna Array for 802.11ac and 4.9 GHz

In this work, a wideband high gain 1×4 beamforming (BF) antenna array has been proposed for 5.17 - 5.85 GHz ISM band and extended coverage for 4.92 - 4.98 GHz licensed band. The key antenna performances of 13.6 dBi realized gain, 24.4° Beamwidth, 12.9 dB Sidelobe at 0° beam and ±40° beam steering capability has been achieved. The proposed antenna intended to provide the enhanced wireless link between the ground base station and the mobile terminals with beamforming concept that allow beam steering to focus on targeted direction and null the interference direction with small beam width. The proposed antenna can be further re-configured with different gain and steering beam to cater the dynamic transportation environments

100 Gbps/λ PON downstream O- And C-band alternatives using direct-detection and linear-impairment equalization [Invited]

The future-generation passive optical network (PON) physical layer, targeting 100 Gbps/wavelength, will have to deal with severe optoelectronics bandwidth and chromatic dispersion limitations. In this paper, largely extending our Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2020 invited paper, we review 100 Gbps/wavelength PON downstream alternatives over standard single-mode fiber in the O- and C-bands, analyzing three modulation formats (PAM-4, partial-response PAM-4, and PAM-8), two types of direct-detection receivers (APD- and SOA $+$+ PIN-based), and three digital reception strategies (unequalized, feed-forward equalized, and decision-feedback equalized). We evaluate by means of simulations the performance of these alternatives under different optoelectronics bandwidth and dispersion scenarios, identifying O-band feasible solutions able to reach 20 km of fiber and an optical path loss of at least 29 dB over a wide wavelength range of operation. Finally, we compare two digitally precompensated modulation schemes that are highly tolerant of chromatic dispersion, showing a possible extension to C-band operation, preserving direct-detection and linear-impairment equalization at the optical network unit side

Wideband Inverse Matrix For Radiated Two-Stage MIMO Measurements

Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technology is one of the significant components in the growing fifth-generation (5G) communication systems. The 5G system has expanded its frequency range and widened the bandwidth to achieve higher throughput rates and more stable wireless qualities, which brings new challenges to the over-the-air (OTA) MIMO evaluations. The wide bandwidth introduces systematic uncertainties into the MIMO measurement because of the increased amplitude and phase variation issues under different frequencies in the wideband signals, and it could lead to invalid MIMO throughput measurement results when severe. The effect on antenna isolation resulting from amplitude and phase variation in wideband MIMO measurements are analyzed based on the RTS MIMO measurement method. A wideband inverse matrix algorithm is introduced to solve this issue and improve the wideband MIMO antenna isolation. The proposed method can be used in both MPAC and RTS chambers, which paves the way for decreasing the OTA measurement uncertainties on both 5G sub-6GHz wideband MIMO and millimeter-wave MIMO evaluations

User data dissemination concepts for earth resources

Domestic data dissemination networks for earth-resources data in the 1985-1995 time frame were evaluated. The following topics were addressed: (1) earth-resources data sources and expected data volumes, (2) future user demand in terms of data volume and timeliness, (3) space-to-space and earth point-to-point transmission link requirements and implementation, (4) preprocessing requirements and implementation, (5) network costs, and (6) technological development to support this implementation. This study was parametric in that the data input (supply) was varied by a factor of about fifteen while the user request (demand) was varied by a factor of about nineteen. Correspondingly, the time from observation to delivery to the user was varied. This parametric evaluation was performed by a computer simulation that was based on network alternatives and resulted in preliminary transmission and preprocessing requirements. The earth-resource data sources considered were: shuttle sorties, synchronous satellites (e.g., SEOS), aircraft, and satellites in polar orbits

Equalization of multi-Gb/s chip-to-chip interconnects affected by manufacturing tolerances

Electrical chip-to-chip interconnects suffer from considerable intersymbol interference at multi-Gb/s data rates, due to the frequency-dependent attenuation. Hence, reliable communication at high data rates requires equalization, to compensate for the channel response. As these interconnects are prone to manufacturing tolerances, the equalizer must be adjusted to each specific channel realization to perform optimally. We adopt a reduced-complexity equalization scheme where (part of) the equalizer is fixed, by involving the channel statistics into the equalizer derivation. For a 10 cm on-board microstrip interconnect with a 10% tolerance on its parameters, we point out that 2-PAM transmission using a fixed prefilter and an adjustable feedback filter, both with few taps, yields only a moderate bit error rate degradation, compared to the all-adjustable equalizer; at a bit error rate of 1e-12 these degradations are about 1.1  dB and 3  dB, when operating at 20 Gb/s and 80 Gb/s, respectively