Bit error rate measurement of a high-speed small-voltage signal using a superconducting transmission line

We developed a measuring system that has a magnetically shielded wide-band test fixture mounted on a closed-cycle cryo-cooler, and used this system to investigate the feasibility of cryo-packaging technology for high-Tc super conducting digital electronics. In this work, we evaluated the bit-error-ra te (BER) performance of a system in which was installed a 50-Omega standard microstrip Line (MSTL) and a YBa(2)Cu(3)Ox microstrip line to a coplanar w aveguide (CPW) transmission line converter (MCC), In the experiment, we use d 3-Gbps, 2(15) - 1 pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) signals. The tempe rature of the test fixture was 20 K, Results showed that the BER was 3.74 x 10(-9) for the 50-Omega MSTL when the signal amplitude at the sample was 1 3.3 mV, and 1.52 x 10(-9) for the MCC when the amplitude was 30.8 mV. The e ffect of the signal loss and impedance mismatch on the BER is also discusse d.