Radiation Hard Electronics for Advanced Communication Systems, Phase I

Reprogrammable/reconfigurable communication systems implemented with fault tolerant electronics have direct applications in Defense systems. In the past, every custom high-performance ICs processor designed for NASA has been eventually incorporated in defense systems. There is every reason to believe this will be true for the new electronic technology. Sub 100 nm electronics is becoming the basis for most commercial electronic systems today. It is conjectured by many that radiation effects will impact terrestrial applications as the transistor feature sizes become smaller. In real time control applications, radiation effects can have costly impacts in terms of financial, physical or human loss. Real time control is evident in aircraft, security, financial transaction, equipment control, and even automobile systems. It is extremely difficulty to diagnose a SEU issues because they are not easily repeatable, and therefore it may take some time before the SEU problem becomes evident. SRL electronics can become the solution for such applications in future commercial systems. Self Recovery Logic (SRL) that provides high speed SEU tolerant solutions which are effective for sub 100 nm electronics will be used in the design of most, if not all, future NASA special purpose processors. Legacy solutions do not work for high speed circuits and TMR is too burdensome. From the basis developed herein, an entirely new SRL electronic circuit library will be created for automatic synthesis of custom chips using commercial CAD tools, enabling NASA engineers to utilize commercial electronic foundries to produce reconfigurable/reprogrammable communication systems and other custom chip applications. SRL technology might the only non-TMR solution for the use of sub 100 nm electronics. More »