Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Radiation Hard Electronics for Advanced Communication Systems
Project Description
Advanced reconfigurable/reprogrammable communication systems will require use of commercial sub 100 nm electronics. Legacy radiation tolerant circuits fail to provide Single Event Upset (SEU) immunity at speeds greater than 500 MHz. New base level logic circuits have been demonstrated in Phase I that provide SEU immunity for sub 100 nm high speed circuits. A completely new circuit and system approach called Self Recovery Logic (SRL) is proposed for development herein which is able to function at the full speed afforded by the fabrication process and able to tolerate SEU impacts not possible with legacy circuits. Moreover, a truly fault tolerant system is projected to replace Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) as the on-chip means for fault tolerance. With the proposed building blocks in place, advanced reconfigurable and reprogrammable high speed devices can be implemented. The proposed work herein creates a robust test circuit for fabrication and radiation testing to prove conclusively that SRL is a superior technology and then to create an SRL synthesis library that can be used with commercial synthesis tools to create advanced communication systems.
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Anticipated Benefits
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 »
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 »
Project Library
Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICs | Lead Organization | Industry | McCall, Idaho |
Glenn Research Center
(GRC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Cleveland, Ohio |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
Idaho
-
Ohio
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