Hypres Inc. has formed a partnership with Selex Communications to develop an all-digital receiver for the Selex Communications software-defined radio.
"This is the first commercial R & D contract we have signed as a result of the work we have been doing since we decided that, strategically, the most important objective for Hypres was to revolutionize RF by transforming analog RF into digital RF," said Richard Hitt, chief executive officer of Hypres. Reduced to the barest essentials this means simply taking an RF signal in and putting a digital datastream out.

The all-digital receiver will provide high-performance, multichannel wideband reception for the Selex Communications software radio undergoing development.

Above 2 GHz, direct conversion of RF is not possible with conventional semiconductors. However, superconductor chips are able to run much faster than a traditional semiconductor chip. This enables fabricating A/D converters that enable sampling these frequencies fast enough so that the baseband information can be digitized with sufficient resolution to produce a useful datastream.

"Employing superconductivity enables fabricating A/D converter chips at virtually almost any useful frequency," said Hitt. "Soon we shall be at Ka band and even EHF, which means 30 GHz and above."

A decade ago, the task of cooling the chips was prohibitive. But the cryocooler industry has progressed far enough that you can mount approximately nine of these superconductive chips on a small board inside a closed cycle refrigerator that is no larger than a small microwave oven. Therefore, these superconducting A/Ds are suitable for complex RF systems such as SATCOM systems, cellular base stations and shipboard communications. What's more, by eliminating analog components — no downconverting is required — the signal is digitized right at the antenna terminal. Therefore, you don't have the usual signal combining, and down-conversion, coaxial transport, that would otherwise degrade performance.

Formed in 1983, Hypres Inc., with headquarters in Elmsford, N.Y., develops superconductor microelectronics for the defense and commercial wireless markets.

Selex Communications, a Finmeccanica Company, with headquarters in Italy, supplies networked solutions for governmental, civil and military applications.

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