Radiation Hard Wide Temperature Range Mixed-Signal Components

Low temperature survivability, high performance and radiation tolerance of electronics in combination is required for NASA's surface missions. Modern sub-micron CMOS circuits operate at low power supply voltages and offer a very large scale of integration and compatibility with automated design tools at gigabit/second data rates. Unfortunately, their power consumption significantly increases at higher frequencies and single-ended architectures are associated with switching noise and duty cycle distortion. They are also highly susceptible to radiation effects and not suitable for extreme temperatures. On the other hand, differential current-switching circuits utilizing hetero-junction bipolar transistors (HBTs) overcome all named problems but suffer from high supply voltages and DC currents. Our company proposes to develop a set of high-performance, power-efficient, wide temperature range, radiation-hard mixed-signal components representing modifications of the company's existing commercial products. The designs will be based on the proprietary library of CML current switches utilizing HBTs from a commercial BiCMOS technology and will operate within temperature range from -200oC to +140oC and TID>1MRad. The list of products will include high-speed reprogrammable serializers and deserializers, active delay lines, trans-impedance amplifiers, sample and hold devices, VCSEL drivers, etc. Mission critical ASICs will be analyzed during Phase I and fabricated in Phase II.

RH ICs with CML/LVDS interfaces operating at extreme temperatures and radiation will serve as key components of high-performance space systems that are hard or impossible to build in other technologies. The Space-qualified CML library can be efficiently applied to the development of commercial SerDes products for data transfer and telecommunications in the range of 10Gb/s-12.5Gb/s data rates, as well as other high-frequency digital and mixed-signal systems. The application area of these products spreads from PC back planes to long-haul communication networks to spacecraft command and data handling systems.

High-performance, low-power mixed-signal components capable to operate at extreme temperatures and radiation environment of deep Space will be highly beneficial for NASA's surface missions to Titan, Europa, Ganymede, and comets, as well as to Mars and the Earth's Moon.. In addition, the successful testing of the devices built within the same library of components will prove the applicability of this library for future designs of similar products, which will reduce the time required for product development by 25-60%.

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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