Scaled CMOS reliability and considerations for spacecraft systems: Bottom-up and top-down perspectives

Abstract

The recently launched Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) flagship mission, named Curiosity, is the most complex rover ever built by NASA and is scheduled to touch down on the red planet in August, 2012 in Gale Crater. The rover and its instruments will have to endure the harsh environments of the surface of Mars to fulfill its main science objectives. Such complex systems require reliable microelectronic components coupled with adequate component and system-level design margins. Reliability aspects of these elements of the spacecraft system are presented from bottomup and top-down perspectives.

Original Design Procedure For Self-Reconfigurable Low Noise Figure and High RF Input Power Overdrive LNAs: Application To X-Band GaN MMICs

“…Whatever the transistor's noise model, the transconductance gain gm, the resistance of the gate and of the source (RS, RG) or drain-source (RDS) are the main parameters that play a role in the noise temperature or in the noise figure expression. Popiezalski's empirical model for the minimum achievable noise temperature Tmin [6] is calculated by highlighting gm, and finally expressed according to (1), in an expression very close to those that can be found in other related models. Also (2) proposes the minimum noise factor Fmin based on Fukui's model [7].…”

“…While LNAs based on CMOS technology suffer from a reduction of the supply voltage as a consequence of the reduction of the channel length (scaling of the CMOS voltage, i.e. [1]), and therefore a reduction of the maximum RF overdrive in linear mode or before destruction, wide bandgap technologies, such as Nitride technologies, open the way to the design of new amplifier architectures, mainly for power amplification. In the case of Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA), GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) allows both good detectivity (low Noise Figure at 50  input matching -NF50) and improved robustness against electromagnetic (EM) waves for applications in harsh environment.…”

Common‐rail powered reliability improving technique for single‐supply complementary metal oxide semiconductor amplifiers

“…As submicron complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies are reducing device size to improve chip area efficiency and ease supply power burden, on-chip integrated circuits are becoming more vulnerable to performance issues resulting from process and system variation [1][2][3][4]. Consequently, active devices in a transceiver circuit may suffer from altered turn-on (threshold) voltage because of aging [5] and random dopant fluctuations [6,7].…”