Scattering parameter and bit error rate characterization of high temperature superconducting coplanar transmission lines

We report the gigahertz experimental results of time and frequency performance on YBCO high temperature superconductor (HTS) and gold coplanar transmission lines. An on-wafer direct probing measurement system was used to collect data at cryogenic temperatures on both YBCO and gold coplanar lines. The insertion loss of the 6-cm lines at a frequency of 3.0 GHz was measured to be -0.12 dB for the superconducting line compared to -10.7 dB for the gold line at 80 K. Error rate and eye-diagram measurements were performed on the packaged lines and show the correlation between the insertion loss of the line and the attenuation of a Pseudo Random Bit Sequence (PBRS). The superconducting line measured at 77 K had a BER rate of less than 10/sup -11/ at a data rate of 3 Gb/s. The measured eye height was 350 mV for the YBCO compared to 100 mV for a gold line at 3 Gb/s and a temperature of 77 K for the packaged 6-cm lines.