Generation of control signals using second-Nyquist zone technique for superconducting qubit devices

There is growing interest in developing integrated room temperature control electronics for the control and measurement of superconducting devices for quantum computing applications. With the availability of faster DACs, it has become possible to generate microwave signals with amplitude and phase controls directly without requiring any analog mixer. In this report, we use the evaluation kit ZCU111 to generate vector microwave pulses using the second-Nyquist zone technique. We characterize the performance of the signal generation and measure amplitude variation across second Nyquist zone, single-sideband phase noise, and spurious-free dynamic range. We further perform various time-domain measurements to characterize a superconducting transmon qubit and benchmark our results against traditionally used analog mixer setups.