Digital Channelizing Radio Frequency Receiver

HYPRES is developing a class of digital receivers featuring direct digitization at radio frequency (RF). Such a receiver consists of a wideband analog-to-digital converter (ADC) modulator and multiple digital channelizer units to extract different frequency bands-of-interest within the broad digitized spectrum. The single-bit oversampled data, from either a lowpass delta or bandpass delta-sigma modulator, are applied to one or more channelizers, each comprising digital in-phase and quadrature mixers and a pair of digital decimation filters. We perform channelization in two steps, the first at full ADC sampling clock frequency with rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) digital circuits and the second at reduced (decimated) clock frequency with commercial field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips at room temperature. We have demonstrated lowpass and bandpass digital receivers by integrating an ADC modulator and a channelizer unit on the same chip at clock frequencies up to 20 GHz. These 1-cm² single-chip digital-RF receivers contain over 10,000 Josephson junctions. The channelizing receiver approach can be extended to include multiple ADC modulators and multiple channelizer units on a multi-chip module.