Application of high-temperature superconducting small current limiting against over-current in low-noise amplifier electronic circuit

Abstract

High temperature superconducting (HTS) materials have been employed in fabricating the fault current limiters, and they are regarded as the ideal fault current limiting apparatus in power system to make up for the capacity deficiency of the circuit breaker. The grade of the fault current in power system is higher, so the HTS-fault current limiters are mainly manufactured by the HTS tapes. Meanwhile, HTS-thin film is also deployed as the current limiting devices, but the rated current of single piece is not enough to limit the fault current in power system. Thus such current grade of the thin film could suit for the protection of Low-noise amplifier (LNA) electronic circuit. Since LNA is the most vulnerable element of the radio frequency (RF) front end (the rated current of it is smaller), and the function of the RF front end will be destroyed after the LNA is damaged. The protection method based on HTS small current limiting (SCL) on the LNA electronic circuit against the over-current is proposed in this paper. A group of preliminary contrastive experiments carried out in our laboratory to test the protective effect of the proposed protection method on LNA electronic circuit. It is found that this protective method based on HTSSCL can operate as expected and the LNA electronic circuit can also be protected well.