Compact cryogenic wide-band balanced amplifiers with superconducting 90° hybrids for the IF of submillimeter-wave SIS mixers

The pressing demand for mm-wave cryogenic radio astronomy receivers with increasing instantaneous bandwidth has spurred interest in more complex intermediate frequency amplifier configurations, like the balanced amplifier, as the traditional options have increasing difficulties to comply either with the noise or the input matching specifications. This solution is typically penalized by the slight increment in noise produced by the quadrature hybrid losses. We propose a balanced amplifier using a novel 3 dB quadrature hybrid coupler design with superconducting lines. The prototype unit built for the 4-12 GHz band integrates in the same module the hybrid coupler chips, the low noise amplifiers and the bias circuitry. The mechanical design allows for an independent testing of the individual amplifiers. The average noise temperature is 4.4 K, only 0.3 K more than the average of its amplifiers. The input reflection improves more than 10 dB. This compact balanced amplifier is also compared with a non-integrated version, showing an improvement in noise and reflection. It has been tested in a complete mm-wave receiver, with advantage over other IF schemes.