New Rf sampling modality alleged to sample from "DC to daylight"

[cdev]

Does anybody have any impressions or knowledge about this? 

will this make extremely wide range of sampling available anytime soon?

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-quantum-entire-radio-frequency-spectrum.html

[mawyatt]

Interesting technology, although they didn't give much detail on how this works. Certainly the frequency range and applications are quite valid!! Need to look into this more, thanks for posting

We were working on similar needs for wide-band spectral analysis for the same reasons given before retiring a few years back . We coined the name "RF Spectral Imager", and a patent (11125794) was issued late last year covering some of the technology involved, while some was kept as trade secret.

https://patents.justia.com/patent/11125794

The patent covers the techniques which employ CMOS technology that's similarly utilized in camera CMOS imager chips. A key feature was using a special technique where the NMOS device "remembers" the last drain current even tho disconnected at the gate and drain (gate oxide charge capture). The device is configured for current mode operation and becomes a RF Sampler Pixel of the RF input current, thus an RF sampler Pixel type memory element. These RF Pixel Memory elements are arranged such to that allow Current Mode FFTs to be performed in Real Time with Discrete Time Continous Amplitude fashion by utilizing the NMOS device characteristics as the FFT weighing functions, and followed by many high resolution ADCs like used in camera chips which read the rows and columns.

Since the RF Pixel Memory is very small, thousands or even millions of RF Pixel Memory elements, all the Real Time current mode FFT circuitry and Frequency Bin ADCs can all be integrated onto a single silicon CMOS chip!!

These unique Spectral Imager Chips could be dynamically configured to do "other" things than FFTs for specific proprietary uses.

Best,

 

 

[mawyatt]

Should add that this RF Pixel Sampler can operate to >40GHz in modern CMOS, and the Current Mode FFT is fast and has the unique "Computational" attributes of FFT Addition/Subtraction by simple wired OR Drains, and FFT Multiplications by simple Device Size/Scaling. So all the required FFT Computations are handled in the Real Time Analog Domain by means of simple scalable Current Mirrors, no Smoke tho

Best,