Active Electrically Small Antenna Based on Superconducting Quantum Array

TL;DR

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and experimental evaluation of superconducting quantum array-based active electrically small antennas, demonstrating high linearity and transfer factor in prototype tests.

Contribution

It introduces Superconductive Quantum Arrays as a novel active ESA technology and provides experimental data on their performance.

Findings

Magnetic field to voltage transfer function linearity up to 70 dB

Transfer factor up to 6.5 mV/μT in prototypes

Successful fabrication of Nb-based prototypes

Abstract

We introduce Superconductive Quantum Arrays (SQAs) and propose to use these structures as active Electrically Small Antennas (ESA). Several prototypes of the active ESA were fabricated using Nb process with critical current density 4.5 kA/cm2 and experimentally evaluated. The magnetic field to voltage transfer function linearity up to 70 dB was measured, and transfer factor dV/dB up to 6.5 mV/{\mu}T was observed for the ESA prototype containing 560 cells.