Date of Award

2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Department

Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Sungho Kim

Abstract

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) are promising superconducting detectors that achieve superior sensitivity to silicon-based photo detectors by leveraging a small bandgap of superconductors. They are advantageous for sensitive imaging instruments, particularly space telescopes. However, a large-format array with several hundreds of thousands of detectors is required for large-scale observations in space, and it encounters multiple challenges. The biggest challenge is the absence of compact, energy-efficient, and radiation-tolerant readout solutions. Of multiple functions in the MKID readout, the new frequency comb generator is presented in this thesis. It features a low on-chip memory requirement while promising the relaxed frequency resolution in the readout and enabling the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) implementation of a compact, energy-efficient frequency comb generation solution for large-format MKIDs.

The first part of this work discusses the key challenges of designing an on-chip frequency comb generator and the methods that provide a reduction in the power consumption and memory requirement. The second part presents the development of the MKID readout simulator and detailed simulation results to evaluate the proposed methods. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first effort to develop MKID readout electronics within a compact, single-chip solution. The proposed methods will be implemented and validated in hardware.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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