Improved Dynamic Range Analog-to-Digital Converter

An improved dynamic range analog-to-digital converter (ADC) subsystem is proposed that utilizes a passive superconducting microwave dispersive filter and a digital signal processor. The signal to be converted is passed through a superconducting passive filter and the output from the filter is used as the input to a low-temperature superconductor (LTS) ADC. The dispersive filter can be made using either a superconducting electromagnetic delay line or a microwave acoustic delay line with superconducting electrodes. The dispersive filter convolves its impulse response with the input signal to be converted. If the filter is implemented as a surface acoustic wave device it would not introduce any spurious intermodulation terms since it is a linear device. After the analog-to-digital conversion, the digital signal processor compresses the filter´s dispersion back into an impulse. The effective gain in dynamic range is provided by the pulse compression gain of the dispersive filter