Episode 49 is a conversation with Adrian Helwig, Analog Field Application Engineer, and Michael Seidl, Systems Engineer from Texas Instruments, about the trends in space electronics.

Texas Instruments is a global semiconductor manufacturing company with expertise in analog and embedded processing chips. The company was founded in 1930 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas. In this episode, we discuss:

• While power is a very precious good in space satellite applications continue to become even more power-hungry in the future:
  • More intelligence/processing power for telecom and data routing applications
  • AI for pre-processing on-board on optical and radar imaging payload to reduce data rates even though resolution goes up  
  • Electrically steered antennas replace classic mechanical antenna pointing system, RF to bits (RF sampling)
  • Small satellites autonomous maneuvering for debris avoidance, etc.
• Designers must increase total power capabilities / power density and bring efficiency up. Efficiency is very important as any improvement will bring a double benefit: power that is no longer wasted does not have to be produced anymore. Reduced power losses save efforts in cooling. With higher efficiency, there is also greater power density possible. TI’s products enable such higher power density to also enable savings in the board area.
• The high quality of the voltage rails is increasingly challenging to meet: e.g. Only 0.8V core voltages with tens of Amperes but +/-3% tolerance leaves only mV intolerance; Power distribution network requires a high amount of capacitance which adds cost and board area. highly precise instruments and very high-throughput communication systems require super-low noise levels on the supply voltage. 
• The power tree is fundamentally important for the overall robustness and availability of the satellite. TI provides a high level of radiation hardness (especially against heavy ion impacts which are challenging for power devices) combined with several protection solutions – integrated into the actual power devices but also as discrete functions to complement the actual power supply solution. Tight control of the voltage rails is very important to assure the reliability of the system. For e.g. a 10% transient applied to a downstream device can easily damage it or degrade its longevity. With -SEP and QMLP/QMLV the right level of cost & rad hardness. Fault Detection, Isolation & Recovery
• Full portfolio and strong roadmap, including eFuses, all to power density, protection, integration 
• Strong design support capabilities; Stability analysis, pricing, and availability via web store; PMP designs; EVMs; TIDAs… All radiation reports, quality data, materials, etc. are available online.

You can find out more about Texas Instruments here on their satsearch supplier hub.

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