Radiation-Hardened Reprogrammable Sensor Adaptor

Responsive Space concept accepted as long-term road map for the aerospace systems requires development of ultra-rapid avionics (Responsivonics), which must be radiation tolerant (RT), flexible, reprogrammable, and Plug-and-Play compatible. Of primary importance are RT, flexible, software-only reconfigurable complex sensor interfaces to a back-end digital processor. Signal conditioning or sampling is required for interfacing a Malleable Signal Processor (MSP) with a particular sensor. The corresponding block must be RT, reprogrammable, and feature minimal power consumption and dimensions. In response to these needs, we proposes to develop a novel, RT, reprogrammable Sensor Adaptor Segment (RSAS) for interfacing of an MSP to multiple sensors with a focus towards focal plane arrays. The unprecedented interface flexibility will be achieved through application of our proprietary reprogrammable level shifting technique. The work will be done in cooperation with the Alliant TechSystems - Mission Research, which has a unique experience in design of RT circuits, specifically MSP. RSAS will be implemented as a compact MCM assembled with utilization of a standard surface package mounting or chip-on-board (COB) techniques. Our patent-pending multi-level interconnect technique may be used for RSAS-to-MSP interactions. Radiation tolerance of the system will be achieved by a combination of proprietary hardening-by-technology, hardening-by-design, and hardening-by-architecture techniques.