High Performance ADC for Reconfigurable/Reprogrammable Communication Systems

Ridgetop Group will develop a 3X improvement in sampling resolution over current state-of-the art analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology to support reconfigurable/reprogrammable communication systems. The significance of this innovation lies in the time-interleaved pipeline ADC, based on the most advanced silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology available, with over 2 bits higher effective number of bits (ENOB = 11.0 bits) than the best commercially available radiation-tolerant 2 GS/s ADCs (ENOB = 8.9 bits). In addition, the ADC consumes 65% less power than commercial ADCs, conserving valuable spacecraft power. For maximum flexibility and minimal power consumption, the ADC provides two configurable pipeline channels and four programmable operation modes. The ADC will also provide 3 GHz input analog bandwidth for direct sampling of RF signals in the S-band. The ADC will tolerate 5 Mrads of total ionizing dose (TID) radiation due to the inherent radiation tolerance of the SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT), 130 nm thin-oxide CMOS transistors, and standard radiation-hardening-by-design (RHBD) techniques. The ADC will be also sufficiently hardened against single-event effects (SEE). Ridgetop will fabricate and test the ADC in the IBM 130 nm BiCMOS SiGe process in Phase 2 of this SBIR program.

Potential NASA commercial applications include: communication systems, radar, imaging, detectors, space radio astronomy, UAVSAR, and Europa programs

Potential non-NASA commercial applications include: - Military satellite communications - Space-based radar applications - Synthetic aperture radar applications - Digital beamforming (DBF) radar applications - Wide-band satellite receivers - Wireless RF infrastructures - Test and measurement instrumentation - Wireless LAN - Data acquisition systems - Software-defined radio - Power amplifier linearization - Signal intelligence and jamming

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — 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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