Superconducting analog-to-digital conversion for RF all-digital receiver applications

The commercial availability of Gigahertz speed RF superconducting integrated circuits provides an opportunity to extend the concept of the software defined radio to a general purpose all digital receiver (ADR). This paper will focus on an ADR's RF front end, principally the issue of full band analog-to-digital conversion (ADC). Specifically, a new Arcsine ADC technique is presented which is compatible with homomorphic, multiplier-free architectures for high-speed correlation and discrete Fourier transforms. When such techniques are combined with HTS anti-aliasing filters and LTS digital electronics, a new generation of wideband signal processing RE front-ends is possible.