Circuit design of an RSFQ counter for voltage standard applications

전압 표준용 RSFQ counter회로의 설계

An RSFQ (Rapid Single Flux Quantum) counter can be used as a frequency divider that was an essential part of a programmable voltage standard chip. The voltage standard chip is composed of two circuit parts, a counter and an antenna Analog signal of tens to hundreds ㎓ may be applied to a finline antenna part. This analog signal can be converted to the stream of SFQ voltage pulses by a DC/SFQ circuit. The number of voltage pulses can be reduced by 2n times when they pass through a counter that is composed of n T Flip-Flops (Toggle Flip-Flop). Such a counter can be used not only as a frequency divider, but also to build a programmable voltage standard chip. So, its application range can be telecommunication, high speed RAM, microprocessor, etc. In this work, we have used Xic, WRspice, and L-meter to design an RSFQ counter. After circuit optimization, we could obtain the bias current margins of the T Flip-Flop circuit to be above 31％ Our RSFQ counter circuit designs were based on the 1 ㎄/$\textrm{cm}^2$ niobium trilayer technology.