We have successfully tested a fully integrated 16-channel
autocorrelator complete with on-chip prescalers, HF clock generator
and quantizer, which demonstrated basic functionality at clock speeds
of up to 11 GHz. The tested chip was imperfect: critical current
density was around
, low-frequency margins were narrow
and 3 out of 16 channels were inoperational. In the experiments with
the harmonic input signals we observed several minor differences
between the theoretical and the experimentally measured
autocorrelation functions. The main source of these differences were
the digital errors in the delay line, which we expect to be completely
eliminated in a better fabrication sample of the same design. Another
limiting subsystem in this experiment was the room-temperature
interface. A specialized real-time 16-channel autocorrelator data
acquisition system is currently being built. In the future we also
plan to design an improved version of the input quantizer allowing
considerably larger amplitudes of the input signal. But even with all
these imperfections, the autocorrelator, being a statistical device,
still served its function and demonstrated bandwidth/16 frequency
resolution and detection of a harmonic signal with amplitude
below the gray zone width.