Proton Induced Single Event Effect Characterization on a Highly Integrated RF-Transceiver

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) systems in space applications are usually designed for a single task and its requirements. Flexibility is mostly limited to software-defined adaption of the signal processing in digital signal processors (DSP) or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). RF specifications, such as frequency band selection or RF filter bandwidth are thereby restricted to the specific application requirements. New radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) devices also allow the software-based reconfiguration of various RF specifications. A transfer of this RFIC technology to space systems would have a massive impact to future radio systems for space applications. The benefit of this RFIC technology allows a selection of different RF radio applications, independent of their RF parameters, to be executed on a single unit and, thus, reduces the size and weight of the whole system. Since most RF application sin space system require a high level of reliability and the RFIC is not designed for the harsh environment in space, a characterization under these special environmental conditions is mandatory. In this paper, we present the single event effect (SEE) characterization of a selected RFIC device under proton irradiation. The RFIC being tested is immune to proton induced single event latch-up and other destructive events and shows a very low response to single failure interrupts. Thus, the device is defined as a good candidate for future, highly integrated radio system in space applications.

Radiation Tolerant Electronics

“…The radiation tolerance was verified through SPICE simulations with radiation-aware transistor models. In [4], the authors presented the proton induced SEE characterization of a highly integrated RF transceiver in 65 nm CMOS. The exposed proton energies were split into two test campaigns to induce high energy protons (up to 184 MeV) and low energy protons down to 4 MeV.…”

In-Situ Testing of a Multi-Band Software-Defined Radio Platform in a Mixed-Field Irradiation Environment

“…In this test configuration the exchangeable RF daughterboard has been demounted to enable full access to the components of interest for the proton beam. Further investigations on the RF data in this test campaign have been skipped due to the radiation test results that have been obtained previously on a separated proton test, focusing only on the AD9361 [11]. The GSDR was running the same software (except the usage of a SD-card for intermediate data storage and collecting RF data) and the numbers of events were counted.…”

Single event latch-up detection for nano-satellite external solar radiation mitigation system

“…Even small increment of current over normal supplied current, the SEL will occur and may damage the systems overall. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”