Physical Concepts and Modeling Procedures for Picosecond and SubpicosecondDistributed Circuits

摘要

The development of advanced high-speed digital devices and integrated circuitshas been spurred by a number of applications, including fiber-optic digital data transmission at gigahertz rates, high-throughput computing, and wideband signal processing. Military interest in high-speed digital electronics stems from the need to rapidly acquire, digitize, and process very large amounts of data in EW systems. Associated with the needs for high-speed logic are commensurate demands for broadband analog signal processing, interface, and I/O electronics. Such circuits include correlators, broadband adaptive filters, picosecond-resolution sample-and-hold gates, and multigigahertz-rate D/A and A/D converters. For the digital and analog circuits mentioned, ultra-wide bandwidth instrumentation of superior speed is required for measuring the devices to be employed. It is primarily this critical need for ultra-wide bandwidth instrumentation that has been addressed through the work done under this contract. Without such a capability for performing picosecond and subpicosecond measurements of electrical phenomena, it will be impossible to correctly engineer and characterize devices and circuits required for the applications listed above.