Copper replaced aluminum nearly two decades ago as interconnect material in integrated circuit manufacturing due to its better electrical conductivity. The size of the interconnect wire has been steadily decreasing as Moore’s law has been progressing through various feature size...

Motor position sensing is a critical application in a number of systems. Galvanically isolated sensors for motor position sensing are strongly favored in both industrial and extreme-environment applications. Two examples of these sensors are...

The Dynamically Configurable Pipeline is a concept for the rapid implementation of pipelined computational algorithms in configurable hardware such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The approach, especially in its phase-coherent incarnation, allows a high level of sharing of floating-point resources...

In high-integrity systems, a method of assuring integrity called a self-checking pair is employed. A self-checking pair is a logical grouping of two of the same devices performing the same operation and cross-checking each other to ensure correct operation. In this manner,...

Many control applications require precision, high-voltage-capable stimulus current drivers for sensor excitation. In particular, a requirement for a stimulus driver that can be primarily integrated into a motor feedback signal conditioning ASIC (application...

This innovation is a sub-nanosecond time-interval measurement that is compact and inexpensive, implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Currently, high-speed count ers or semi-custom or custom ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) are used for time-interval...

Accurate assessment of circuits at cold temperatures is extremely difficult due to lack of models and tools that can simulate circuit behavior at cryogenic temperatures. A library of cryogenic temperature models was built, as well as a circuit simulator that can use those models and simulate...

A test array has been developed to measure the response of pixel-integrated infrared gratings over a wavelength range from 3 to 13 μm for multiple grating geometries. This array allows for testing and for determining the performance of an infrared focal plane array camera before resources have been...

The Orion CEV Northstar ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) project required a DDR (double data rate) memory bus driver/receiver (DDR PHY block) to interface with external DDR memory. The DDR interface (JESD79C) is based on a source synchronous strobe (DQS\) that is sent along with...

The GEO-CAPE mission described in NASA’s Earth Science and Applications Decadal Survey requires high spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution measurements to monitor and characterize the rapidly changing chemistry of the troposphere over North and South Americas. High-frame-rate focal...

The MagnetoSpheric Multiscale (MMS) mission had a requirement to use the Remote Memory Access Protocol (RMAP) over its SpaceWire network. At the time, no known intellectual property (IP) cores were available for purchase. Additionally, MMS preferred to implement the RMAP...

This innovation is intended to reduce the size, power, and complexity of pipeline analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that require high resolution and speed along with low power. Digitizers are important components in any application where analog signals (such as light, sound, temperature, etc.)...

The objective of this work was to develop a new class of readout integrated circuit (ROIC) arrays to be operated with Geiger avalanche photodiode (GPD) arrays, by integrating multiple functions at the pixel level (smart-pixel or active pixel technology) in 250-nm CMOS...