Radiation Hard Electronics for Advanced Communication Systems, Phase II

Self Restoring Logic (SRL) provides high speed SEU tolerant solutions which are effective for sub 100 nm electronics and can be used in the design of most if not all future NASA special purpose processors, especially reconfigurable communication processors. Legacy solutions do not work for high speed circuits and TMR is too burdensome. From the basis developed in Phase I, an entirely new SRL electronic circuit library will be created for automatic synthesis of custom chips using commercial CAD tools, enabling NASA engineers the ability to utilize commercial electronic foundries to produce reconfigurable/ reprogrammable communication systems and other custom single-chip applications. SRL technology does not use TMR, and provides higher speed circuits at much greater density than legacy RHBD circuits in sub 100 nm electronics. Reprogrammable/reconfigurable communication systems implemented with fault tolerant electronics has direct applications in Defense systems. As in the past, every custom high performance ICs processor designed for NASA has been incorporated into defense systems. There is every reason to suspect this will be true for the new electronic technology. Sub 100 nm electronics is becoming the basis for most of the commercial electronic systems today. It is conjectured by many that radiation effects will impact terrestrial applications as transistor feature sizes continue 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, power system control, and even automobile systems. It is extremely difficulty to diagnose SEU issues because they are not easily reproduced, and therefore it may take some time before SEU is recognized as a source of problems in commercial electronics. SRL electronics is the solution for such applications in future commercial systems. More »