Advanced Rad Hard ADC for Satellite Applications

Ridgetop Group will develop a novel, ultra high-resolution, radiation-hardened analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for applications in servo control systems in satellites. The key performance attributes, including integral calibration circuitry, resolution of 18 bits, sampling rate of 2 MS/s and power consumption below 100 mW, will be achieved using a successive approximation register (SAR) topology that offers significant advantages over conventional methods. The embedded DAC in the SAR ADC makes use of the capacitor array topology and calibration technique used in the SAR ADC, and it has 18-bit resolution, a 10 MS/s update rate and<20 mW power consumption. As modular building blocks for satellite servo control applications, the data converters are radiation-hardened to 1 Mrads of total ionizing dose (TID), have immunity to single event latchup (SEL) and single event functional interrupts (SEFI), and use radiation-hardening-by-design (RHBD) techniques to obtain sufficient tolerance to single event upsets (SEU) and single event transients (SET). Using the trusted foundry process (TAPO), the blocks will be essential library items for use in fast-track MDA programs where extremely high resolution and radiation-hardened performance are required.