Evaluating the RFSoC as a Software-Defined Radio readout system for Magnetic Microcalorimeters

Arrays of superconducting sensors enable particle spectrum analysis with superior energy resolution. To efficiently acquire data from frequency multiplexed sensors, the readout electronics operating at room temperature must perform multiple tasks, such as low-noise probe tone generation,
frequency demodulation, and data decimation. We designed a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) system composed of an MPSoC board, an analogue-digital conversion stage, and a radio frequency front-end mixing stage to meet the system requirements of 4 GHz instantaneous bandwidth and real-time data analysis. Nevertheless, utilising a Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) could simplify the overall system by integrating the conversion stage. This work investigates the applicability of RFSoCs for the aforementioned use case.