Project Brief
General Competition (December 1992)Thick-Film Superconducting Materials for Radiofrequency CommunicationsDevelop thick-film processing technology for radiofrequency components for communications equipment (such as cellular telephone base stations) based on high-temperature superconductors. Sponsor: ISCO International (formerly Illinois Superconductor Corporation)1840 Oak AvenueThird Floor Evanston, IL 60201
Cellular and other wireless telecommunications are expanding at a tremendous rate. Cellular alone is a $13 billion/year business, and forecast to grow 30 percent per year through this decade. An eight-fold increase in operational channels is projected by the year 2000; these channels carrying 100 times the traffic. There is tremendous pressure to use more efficiently the slices of radio-frequency spectrum used by advanced wireless communications systems. In addition, there is rapidly increasing demand from customers for improvements in channel quality, in both voice and data channels, to increase data transfer rates and offer new services. This requires much higher performance radio systems -- for example sharper RF filters -- than currently are available. Superconducting and cryogenically cooled electronic components offer great benefits to wireless communications, including improved dynamic range, greatly increased receiver sensitivity, improved signal/noise ratio, and increased frequency stability, all of which lead to improved performance due to improved channel quality and increased spectrum efficiency. However, little work has gone into developing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) components for the frequencies used in these wireless communications systems. Part of the problem is in economically making the relatively large, geometrically complex structures needed for these frequencies. ISC has developed a solution for this using thick-film HTS coatings on inexpensive substrates. Working with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Ameritech Mobile Communications, Inc., ISC will work to optimize this technology and demonstrate its feasibility in a prototype cellular base-station receiver using superconducting and cryoelectronic devices. In addition to the huge cellular market, this technology could be important in other wireless communications fields such as interactive TV, airline communications, Doppler radar (for wind-shear detection), and satellite communications.
|
|
ATP website comments: webmaster-atp@nist.gov
Privacy Statement / Security Notice • NIST Disclaimer • NIST Information Quality Standards NIST is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department |