استفاده از آشکارسازهای توان SiGe HBT برای حس انتقال خطای تک رخداد در مدارهای RF Utilizing SiGe HBT Power Detectors for Sensing Single-Event Transients in RF Circuits

I. INTRODUCTION ORBITAL radiation environments can strongly limit the performance and reliability of spacecraft payloads. Mitigation techniques are typically put in place to prolong the lifetime of these systems. Throughout the duration of a mission, however, single-event transients (SETs) generated by energized particles can still penetrate spacecraft shielding, potentially disrupting the proper operation of circuits. The circuits receiving messages from a ground station are particularly sensitive to these events, since they carry the weakest signals due to long transmission distances and atmospheric attenuation. Therefore, detecting single-event effects is of importance for the proper operation of these systems. The previous work has shown that it is possible to design analog circuits to sense SETs by monitoring changes in voltage or currents in a circuit [1], [2]. In addition, several methods for transient detection in the digital domain have been proposed [3]. However, no methods for sensing SETs in RF systems were found in the literature. RF power detectors are typically used in a variety of applications, including millimeter-wave radiometry [4], envelope detection [5], and built-in-self-testing of RF systems [6], [7]. Silicon–germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors (SiGe HBTs) are excellent candidates to fabricate detectors for space applications, since their performance improves at low temperatures and they exhibit a built-in tolerance to total ionizing dose (TID) up to several Mrad(SiO2) [8]. This paper proposes the use of RF power detectors to sense the occurrence of an SET in RF communications systems. By sampling a small fraction of the signal from the main data path into a power detector, information about the signal-tonoise and distortion ratio can be obtained. This information can be used by the digital subsystem to implement detectiondriven data correction protocols. The proposed concept is illustrated in Fig. 1, which depicts a simplified schematic of a direct-conversion RF receiver. The RF receiver uses several directional couplers between each stage that direct a small fraction of the main signal to the input of an RF power detector.