Session
Technical Session X: Instruments and Sensors
Abstract
The RIO chip is a general purpose, low power, radiation hardened, mixed analog/digital data acquisition chip for spacecraft/instrument housekeeping and spacecraft control actions, communicating the information over a serial I2C bus or a standard microprocessor bus. It measures eight Temperatures, eight Voltages, and eight currents, digitizes the measurements with an 10-bit A/D and stores the information in an on chip memory. The sensing capability can extend to other physical quantities such as total radiation dose measurements with radFETs etc. The chip contains also four DAC-comparator-counter channels for monitor and control actions. A general purpose 16-bit digital l/O port is also available, which can be configured for monitoring digital status and setting digital conditions to external devices, acting actually as a micro controller. Four extra l/Os are configured as timer outputs suitable for pulsed or continuous thruster control. The serial communications bus by nature saves a huge amount of harnessing required in a traditional spacecraft design, and allows cascading of many sensors and actuators without additional wiring. It is expected, based on passed experience, that the special care in the design combined with fabrication in a radiation hardened process, will provide a total dose radiation hardness of up to 1Mrad, LET thresholds of ~120 MeV.cm**2/mg, and latch up immunity. This general purpose single die system can revolutionarize the new spacecraft designs, and further more it is a paradigm of a system on a chip, which finally can make reality the concept of the spacecraft on a chip.
A Remote I/O (RIO) Smart Sensor Chip Supporting Serial Communications Bus for Small Satellites
The RIO chip is a general purpose, low power, radiation hardened, mixed analog/digital data acquisition chip for spacecraft/instrument housekeeping and spacecraft control actions, communicating the information over a serial I2C bus or a standard microprocessor bus. It measures eight Temperatures, eight Voltages, and eight currents, digitizes the measurements with an 10-bit A/D and stores the information in an on chip memory. The sensing capability can extend to other physical quantities such as total radiation dose measurements with radFETs etc. The chip contains also four DAC-comparator-counter channels for monitor and control actions. A general purpose 16-bit digital l/O port is also available, which can be configured for monitoring digital status and setting digital conditions to external devices, acting actually as a micro controller. Four extra l/Os are configured as timer outputs suitable for pulsed or continuous thruster control. The serial communications bus by nature saves a huge amount of harnessing required in a traditional spacecraft design, and allows cascading of many sensors and actuators without additional wiring. It is expected, based on passed experience, that the special care in the design combined with fabrication in a radiation hardened process, will provide a total dose radiation hardness of up to 1Mrad, LET thresholds of ~120 MeV.cm**2/mg, and latch up immunity. This general purpose single die system can revolutionarize the new spacecraft designs, and further more it is a paradigm of a system on a chip, which finally can make reality the concept of the spacecraft on a chip.
