This paper describes an 84-116 GHz Nb/Al-oxide/Nb SIS mixer with multi-octave IF bandwidth and quantum-limited sensitivity. The mixer can be integrated with a three-stage 4-12 GHz HFET preamplifier or fitted with a coaxial connector for operation with an external isolator and IF amplifier. An 84-116 GHz receiver using the mixer with an integrated 4-12 GHz HFET preamplifier has a double sideband...

A preamplifier having 500 electrons noise (rms) has been developed for the detection and location of single electrons in a CRID detector at the SLD. A single channel contains preamp, RC-CR shaper, gain adjustment, driver, and calibration circuitry. Noise and linearity measurements are presented.

DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to my family and my fiancé for their continuous love and belief in me. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Martin A. Brooke, for his constant support, flexibility, flow of ideas, and patience during this research program. He has allowed me to explore new ideas, but has constantly helped me stay focused on the main objecti...

A comprehensive summary and analysis of the electronic noise affecting the resolution of X-ray, γ-ray and particle counting spectroscopic systems which employ semiconductor detectors and charge sensitive preamplifiers is presented. The noise arising from the input transistor of the preamplifier and its contribution to the total noise is examined. A model for computing the noise arising from the...

This paper describes precision techniques for the design of comparators used in high-performance analog-to-digita1 converters employing parallel conversion stages. Following a review of conventional offset cancellation techniques, circuit designs achieving 12-b resolution in both BiCMOS and CMOS 5-V technologies are presented. The BiCMOS comparator consists of a preamplifier followed by two reg...

The theoretical shapes of nuclear spin-noise spectra in NMR are derived by considering a receiver circuit with finite preamplifier input impedance and a transmission line between the preamplifier and the probe. Using this model, it becomes possible to reproduce all observed experimental features: variation of the NMR resonance linewidth as a function of the transmission line phase, nuclear spin...

An AlInP 3 × pixel monolithic array was fabricated from a p + -i-n structure wafer (6 ? m thick i layer) grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy; each (square mesa photodiode) had an area of 200 m. The pixels were initially electrically characterized and then subjected to illumination X-ray ? -ray photons energies ? 88 keV while them in turn coupled custom-made, low noise, charge-sensitive p...

Fast centroid-finding electronics are being developed for a range of position-sensitive gas proportional detectors. Each cathode strip feeds a preamplifier, shaper and a free-running ADC. Increased total count rate is achieved by dividing the detector into several segments with parallel processing that introduces no common dead time. Each segment has centralchannel finding logic and event listi...

A 19-channel DC SQUID based neuromagnetometer is under construction at the University of Twente (UT). Except for the cryostat all elements of the system are developed at the UT. It comprises 19 wire-wound first-order gradiometers in a hexagonal configuration. The gradiometers are connected to planar DC SQUIDs fabricated with a Nb/Al, AlO kappa/Nb technology. For this connection we developed a m...