Self-Adaptive System Based on Field Programmable Gate Array for Extreme Temperature Electronics

Abstract

Space missions often require radiation and extreme-temperature hardened electronics to survive the harsh environments beyond earth's atmosphere. Traditional approaches to preserve electronics incorporate radiation shielding, insulation and redundancy at the expense of power and weight. In this work, we report the implementation of a self-adaptive system using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and data converters. The self-adaptive system can autonomously recover the lost functionality of a reconfigurable analog array (RAA) integrated circuit (IC). Both the RAA IC and the self-adaptive system are operating in extreme temperatures (from 120 degC down to -180degC). The RAA IC consists of reconfigurable analog blocks interconnected by several switches and programmable by bias voltages. It implements filters/amplifiers with bandwidth up to 20 MHz. The self-adaptive system controls the RAA IC and is realized on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. It implements a basic compensation algorithm that corrects a RAA IC in less than a few milliseconds. Experimental results for the cold temperature environment (down to -180degC) demonstrate the feasibility of this approach