INSTRUMENTS AND AVIONICS
ASIC
Thanks to an extensive access to silicon foundries, SITAEL is able to develop analog, digital and mixed-signal ASICs resistant to significant values of TID and SEE, starting from the selection of the most appropriate technology, up to the application of specific measures at the architecture, schematics and layout level.
Sensor Front-End ASIC for Curiosity
In collaboration with AIRBUS D&S Crisa, SITAEL designed the “Rover Environmental Monitoring Station” (REMS) Sensor Front End ASIC that is installed on Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” in the frame of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. The ASIC acquires measurement values from the REMS sensors and send them to the Instrument Control Unit. The ASIC is able to acquire measurement values from the REMS sensors and send them to the Instrument Control Unit. Supplied with 5V, this mixed signal ASIC contains the amplification and conditioning analogue circuitry for signals from temperature sensors, IR thermopile sensors and wind sensors. It contains a 16 bit analogue-to-digital converter, with programmable conversion time, to convert the analogue signals into digital data. Since August 2012, the REMS ASIC is installed on the Curiosity Rover on Mars, acquiring for at least five minutes every hour the environmental conditions of the Red Planet.
16 channels High Power Command ASIC
The 16HPCMD ASIC is a power integrated circuit containing 16 high side driver (HSD) channels able to drive high power (HP), high current (HC) and high voltage (HV) inductive or resistive loads connected between the 16 power output pins and external ground. The ASIC has been developed for Thales Alenia Space Italy, with primary application within their platform and payload control of Data Handling equipments. First flight models have been delivered for several TAS programmes.
EUR1553 Transceiver ASIC
In the frame of an ECI phase I initiative named “Europeanisation of MIL STD 1553B Data Bus”, SITAEL developed as AIRBUS D&S subcontractor a EUR1553 dual-bus monolithic Transceiver fully compliant to MIL-STD-1553B standard. The transceiver operates with 5 V power supply for the analog part, and 3.3 V or 5 V for the digital part by selecting the VCC voltage (5 V or 3.3 V). Compatible with standard centre tapped transformers and with long stub or short stub coupling, the EUR1553 transceiver has filtering on receiver to improve S/N ratio. Its low power consumption and its radiation tolerance, are especially relevant for space applications.
Receiver Low Power Analogue Decoder
In the frame of a TRP contrcat with ESA, SITAEL designed and produced the first ASIC implementation of analogue receiver focused on telecommand applications for Category A missions (Return-to-Earth, lunar and even Lagrangian missions). In addition to embedded Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) 128 bit analogue decoder, the ASIC integrates IF coherent demodulation, carrier tracking, clock recovery, SP-L to NRZ codify data conversion and telecommand-communication unit fields recognition. Start Frame pattern analogue recognition and 2-banks analogue memory for input codeword storing are embedded too. The ASIC supports operation with both decoder insertion and decoder in not-correcting mode.
Lightning Imager Pixel Processor ASIC
In the frame of a contract with SELEX ES, SITAEL is designing the Pixel Processor ASIC for the Lighting Imager Payload onboard Meteosat Third Generation Satellite. The ASIC receives data pixel coming from a 1000×1170 pixel array Detector, de-serializes 250MHz incoming data, processes them on the basis of the stored reference background and configurable parameters and extracts events above a certain threshold. Everything is supported by an internal RAM of 10Mbit. An external FPGA receives the events for further processing and controls and configures 4 ASICs through a TC/TM interface.
