Superconductive delay-line technology and applications

It is pointed out that transversal or finite-impulse-response filters are realized in the form of tapped delay lines and are widely employed in wideband analog signal processing applications. The present study is concerned with the recent developments of 'baseline technology'. The baseline technology has the objective to provide a rapid turn-around test vehicle to identify and eliminate sources of irreproducibility, establish and/or extend the limits of device performance, and test new designs without waiting for the development of long-delay-line techniques. Attention is given to device structure, design and analysis, fabrication and packaging, electrical performance, and the impact of fabrication on performance. Long delay lines are considered, taking into account requirements, stacked substrates, and thin supported wafers. Aspects of spectrum analysis are also explored. It is found that the superconductive devices have now surpassed many of the performance goals of competing signal-processing technologies.