Digital Commons Network^™

A Sige Bicmos Lvds Driver For Space-Borne Applications, Matthew Ian Laurence

Masters Theses

When designing an integrated circuit for use during an interstellar mission, certain precautions must be made. The electronics on any off-earth mission will be exposed to wide temperature swings and harmful radiation due to being outside of the Earth’s protective ionosphere. It is crucial that any data path present be immune to these detrimental effects.

The introduction of galactic radiation can not only cause the onboard electronics to fail due to device degradation and single event latchup but can also lead to background radiation being coupled into the signal path as unwanted noise, degrading the signal to noise ratio. Unwanted …

Design Of A Highly Constrained Test System For A 12-Bit, 16-Channel Wilkinson Adc, Zachary William Pannell

Masters Theses

Outer space is a very harsh environment that can cause electronics to not operate as they were originally intended. Aside from the extreme amount of radiation found in space, temperatures can also change very dramatically in a relatively small time frame. In order to test electronics that will be used in this environment, they first need to be tested on Earth under replicated conditions. Vanderbilt University designed a dewar that allows devices to be tested at these extreme temperatures while being radiated. For this thesis, a test setup that met all of the dewar's constraints was designed that would allow …