Direct Measurement of the Gain and Noise Bandwidths of HEB Mixers

Author

Lobanov, Yury V. ; Tong, Cheuk-Yu E. ; Hedden, Abigail S. ; Blundell, Raymond ; Voronov, Boris M. ; Gol´tsman, Gregory N.

Author_Institution

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophys., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

21

Issue

3

fYear

2011

fDate

6/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

645

Lastpage

648

Abstract

The intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth of a hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer is an important parameter of the mixer, in that it helps to determine its suitability for a given application. With the availability of wideband low noise amplifiers, it is simple to measure the performance of an HEB mixer over a wide range of IF at a fixed LO frequency using the standard Y-factor method. This in-situ method allows us to measure both the gain and noise bandwidths simultaneously. We have also measured mixer output impedance with a vector network analyser. Intrinsic time constant has been extracted from the impedance data and compared to the mixer´s bandwidths determined from receiver Y-factor measurement.

Keywords

bolometers; low noise amplifiers; superconducting device noise; superconducting mixers; HEB mixer; IF bandwidth; Y-factor method; gain measurement; hot electron bolometer; intermediate frequency; intrinsic time constant; mixer output impedance; noise bandwidth; vector network analyser; wideband low noise amplifier; Bandwidth; Extraterrestrial measurements; Gain; Impedance measurement; Mixers; Noise; Temperature measurement; Gain and noise bandwidth of the HEB mixer; HEB mixer impedance; hot electron bolometer;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8223

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TASC.2010.2095403

Filename

5672803