Hypres awarded potential $40 million IDIQ contract to develop cryogenic RF systems for the U.S. Navy

Elmsford, NY (September 13, 2016)—Hypres, The Digital Superconductor Company^™, has been awarded a potential $40,387,367 Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract by the U.S. Navy to research, develop, evaluate and implement cryogenic radio frequency systems. This three-year contract includes one two-year option period, which, if exercised, would bring the potential value to $67,699,661.

Hypres will provide systems acquisition support, systems engineering, project management, basic research, development, evaluation and implementation of cryogenic radio frequency systems, and advanced cryogenic core digital and quantum memory technologies, exploiting superconducting quantum interference device, tactical signals intelligence systems, and other military platforms. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific in San Diego, California, is the contracting activity.

“We’re honored to have the Navy select Hypres for this critically important work to develop the next generation of cryogenic RF systems,” said Hypres CEO Richard Hitt.  “This award recognizes the achievements attained with the latest delivered systems and will push the state of the art even further past the limits of traditional semiconductor technologies. Digital superconductor technologies are now well-positioned to accelerate the speed of innovation in these areas.”

Hypres develops and commercializes superconductor electronics that provide unparalleled performance advantages for both government and commercial applications.

The company developed a series of Advanced Digital-RF Receivers (ADRs) for the government that are interoperable with all waveforms and spectrum ranges.  The modular, multifunctional ADR can support multitudes of applications—including SIGINT, SATCOM and tactical links such as JTIDS—by swapping the RF chip modules. ADR-006 has been in operation at SPAWAR for five years. Having been modified to function in various modes for specific applications, the ADR system is now a mature product line with a proven readiness level.

Hypres recently introduced the Integrated Cryogenic Electronics Test-bed (ICE-T), a turnkey, configurable laboratory test system that provides a complete plug-in-the-wall cryogenic infrastructure for broadband electrical testing of standard and custom high-speed integrated circuits at 4 degrees Kelvin and above without liquid cryogens.

The Hypres commercial foundry is a complete low-temperature superconductor (LTS) niobium-based integrated circuit fabrication facility with a proven track record in R&D and limited production.  In addition to standard planarized multilayer integrated circuits with 100-, 4500-, 10000-A/cm² critical current densities for digital, memory, analog and mixed-signal applications, the foundry can accommodate custom fabrication processes including micro-machining for analog 3-D structures.

Hypres also has expertise in high-temperature superconductor (HTS) circuit design.  “HTS-based high sensitivity, wide-band receiver components such as SQIF antennas can provide a performance edge for military systems while maintaining a small SWAP profile,” said Oleg Mukhanov, Ph.D., CTO of Hypres.

“Cryogenic electronics integrated with other shipboard systems bring discriminating performance to the fleet and military combat systems in general,” said Deepnarayan Gupta, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, RF Circuits and Systems, Hypres. “Our Digital-RF architecture, featuring versatile digital and high-quality analog signal processing on either side of superconductor ADCs that directly digitize RF signals, is well-aligned with the Navy’s vision of always being state of the art in SIGINT and RF systems,” said Dr. Gupta, who serves as the principal investigator and program manager for the IDIQ award.