Total Ionizing Dose Effects on a Highly Integrated RF Transceiver for Small Satellite Radio Applications in Low Earth Orbit

Software-Defined Radios (SDR) are commonly used in state-of-the-art radio systems and are already well established in the space industry. A SDR usually describes the signal processing of a radio application in software and is often implemented into Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) or Digital Signal Processors (DSP). Most RF front-ends are strictly specified and realized for an executed application and are thus not re-configurable. With the release of new Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) devices, a significant portion of RF front end specifications have become programmable and alterable. This paper presents the use case and selected radiation test results of such RFIC technologies for small satellite radio applications, primary designed for low earth orbit (LEO) missions.