Benefits of Superconductor Microelectronics for Commerical Wireless Base Stations

HYPRES Superconducting MicroElectronics (SME) Technology provides unparalleled performance improvements in the digital domain allowing, for the first time, the direct digital conversion of RF signals while enabling the use of advanced ultra-high speed digital signal processing techniques. SME makes it possible to take the receive (or transmit) signal directly at the output of the base station antenna and directly convert (ADC) it into the digital format for further processing. The ultra low noise, high speed and sensitivity of the HYPRES Digital-RF allows spectrally pure frequency conversion and signal demodulation. Our technology affords many, hereto for unobtainable, benefits that can significantly improve the performance and cost of commercial wireless networks and base stations. Performance degradations caused by thermal and spurious noise generated by analog frequency converters are eliminated. The DigitalRF front end contributes virtually no noise or signal distortion to the incoming signal. This low noise feature and the significantly enhanced sensitivity of Digital-RF translates to expanded regions for higher data rates and soft handoff, and substantially greater base station range and separation. These unique features result in enhanced network optimization and increased capacity (number of users and data rates/cell). Digital processing in the RF domain enables (for the first time) use of optimum digital correlation techniques to increase S/(N+I) performance by providing near real-time interference and thermal noise suppression. This enables an increase in bandwidth utilization & user data rates while further reducing antenna & HPA size. The HYPRES transceiver is capable of simultaneous reception and decoding of multiple signals over a ultra-broad frequency band. HYPRES hardware is not specific to any analog/digital modulation or multiple access scheme. High speed digital processing directly at the transmit frequencies enables the direct linearization of the multi-GHz waveform at the HPA input by using broadband RF pre-distortion to dynamically correct all distortions in near real time. This enables multi-carrier operation via a single HPA while simultaneously optimizing in-band performance and minimizing out-of-band spurious effects far beyond what current (or forecasted) technologies can achieve. This also represents a significant reduction in initial and operating cost, due to much higher HPA efficiencies, reducing HPA and related cost by 50% to 75%. Unique features in antenna optimization provide the ability to balance the forward (transmit) and reverse (receive) links without an increase in antenna size. HYPRES technology offers many benefits to users, operators and suppliers of wireless networks and regulatory agencies (FCC, etc.):