Striction-based Power Monitoring in Space Environment

The program will leverage recent advances in striction materials and coupled striction devices as to enable highly isolated (analog) voltage and current flow sensors very suitable for harsh space environment power monitoring. Exhibiting negligible electromagnetic disturbance coupling and electromagnetic emission, these non-photonic striction based power flow monitoring introduces decided advantages of eliminating magnetics, processors, degradation and 'latch-up'. These units are simpler and lower cost to manufacture than photonic or capacitive coupled methods of measurement and possessing and furthermore provide far greater (galvanic) isolation capability than is presently achievable. Moreover they can safely/reliably operate over a wide temperature range to as low as cryogenic. The innovation eliminates the present need for separate isolation and gain stages as these are now accomplished in a single step as to reduce design complexity and risk. The effort is to show that these new striction power flow monitoring capabilities can measure power characteristics over wide bandwidth to DC and are highly suitable for widespread NASA use in wide temperature range and high radiation environments. The proposed modular design will be easy to install and reduces the spares requirements.

Power flow monitoring is pervasive and essential across all NASA platforms and subsystems, but the highest pay-off of the new technology innovation will be to NASA missions that need to operate in harsh exposure missions requiring high temperature (extreme cold or extreme hot) and radiation tolerance. Addressing first three specifically identified goals on the NASA rad-hard electronics target list the technology promises to have high impact to unmanned missions and robotic systems with large potential impact for Heliophysics, Mars, and Earth Sciences missions, and possible Jupiter and Venus exploratory missions all of which require all of their on-board electronics and sensor equipment to operate under increasingly tough conditions. NASA specific needs especially unheated electronics and future science payload development initiatives for which this technology could be applied including: Deep Space; Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) flagship; Venus surface exploration; and exploration of the dark lunar polar craters.

There is a wide range for current and (linear) voltage-monitoring application needs across the entire spectrum of space mission requirements and space platform equipment including particle measurement, solar observation, etc. Potential customers include Air Force Space Command, MDA, and NRO where the proposed technology can be immediately applied to surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, navigation, and missile warning. The US Army and major SDR vendors are customers for the proposed advanced power monitoring technology as it will be directly applicable to satellite systems, missile systems, UAV/UUAV, underwater and integrated electronics. A large near-term market is represented by expanding the technology for replacement gate drives in a wide range of switchmode power supplies for military, NASA and commercial users of power equipment or data transfer equipment. A host of medical applications for the electrostriction voltage isolators includes medical equipment Microwave therapy, Patient monitoring, Electrocardiographs, and Defibrillators.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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