Alphacore's technology supports NASA radiometer microwave sensors for a wide range of Earth observation applications. Examples of missions using the proposed RFI mitigating receiver back end technology are SMAP, and Jason missions. The Jason missions currently have radiometers that use analog band-pass filters. The future missions (Jason-CS / Sentinel A, and Jason-CS / Sentinel B) can significantly benefit from this low-power receiver ASIC that has on-chip ADC, digital filters and is optimized for RFI mitigation. Other example missions that can benefit from a radiation-hardened, high-speed, low-power ADC include solar system exploration missions (Europa Clipper, TSSM, VESPER, MARVEL, comet nucleus return, New Discovery and Living with a Star), Mars missions (MAVEN) and lunar orbiters and landers. The Jupiter-bound missions, such as the Europa Clipper and Io Volcano Observer missions, can greatly benefit from the ADC due to its high radiation hardness.
While the initial development of the ASIC targets the stringent requirements of NASA's space-based Earth observing radiometer applications, the receiver back-end also has wide applicability to commercial and defense space missions that measure the humidity of soil, atmosphere or the height of the ocean surface, as an example. The developed system is also very similar to the ones used to read out kinetic inductance detector (KID) arrays that have wide applicability to radio astronomy experiments. One of the large scale experiments is Large Size Telescope (LST). The developed ASIC can be scaled to support KID array readout. The standalonerad-hard ADC has impressive performance and finds strong market potential in defense, communication, test equipment, medical imaging, high-energy physics experiments and high speed digitizer boards. The Government defense space industry, including satellite programs of Air Force, NRO, MDA, and Army will benefit from a high-performance radiation-hard ADC. Among these programs are AEHF upgrades, GPS follow-ons, MDA's PTSS, Air Force's TacSat family, Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), and Army's SMDC nanosat family. The defense CubeSat programs, including NRO's Colony program and the Air Force SENSE program will also benefit. Commercial space platforms that will benefit from the proposed rad-hard ADC include both LEO and GEO telecommunication satellites, such as Intelsat, Direct TV, XM radio, Orbcomm and Iridium.
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