Man-Made Noise Evaluation for Cryogenic Receiver Front-End

Abstract

This paper presents measured results of manmade noise impact on an cryogenic receiver front-end (CRFE) in urban and suburban areas in the 2-GHz band with amplitude probability distribution (APD). The CRFE comprises a high-temperature superconducting filter, cryogenically-cooled low-noise amplifier, and highly-reliable cryostat. The CRFE is expected to be an effective and practical approach to attain efficient frequency utilization and to improve the sensitivity of mobile base station receivers. It is important to measure the characteristics of man-made noise in typical cellular base station antenna environments and confirm their impact on the CRFE reception with APD because if man-made noise has a stronger effect than thermal noise, the CRFE would fail to offer any improvement in sensitivity. The measured results suggest that the contribution of man-made noise in the 2-GHz band can be ignored as far as Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) system is concerned. The manmade noise is also measured in the VHF-band for comparison with the 2-GHz band environment.