Cobham product showcase at NSREC include MRAMs for space applications
NewsJuly 13, 2016
PORTLAND, Ore. Cobham officials showcased a series of products at this year?s Nuclear Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC). Engineered by the Cobham Semiconductor Solutions business unit, part of the Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions sector ? the radiation-hardened space products have been used in projects such as ExoMars.
Cobham’s Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memories (MRAMs) (figure 1), launched aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), are used by the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) instrument on the TGO. NOMAD is a spectrometer suite that will measure the spectrum of sunlight across a wide range of wavelengths, enabling the detection of components of the Martian atmosphere. The MRAMs, officials say, were chosen due to the part’s access time, data retention and footprint, as well as radiation performance. Five MRAMs have been integrated on an interface board on the instrument.
Also featured at the show, the UT64CAN333x series of Controller Area Network (CAN) transceivers (figure 2), which provides the physical layer that permits operation on a differential CAN bus. They are developed in accordance with the ISO 11898-2/-5 standards and are capable of baud rates between 10 kbps to 8 Mbps including a slope-control mode to control the slew rate of the transmissions for baud rates of up to 500kbps. A standby mode disables the transmitter circuit to conserve power while monitoring the bus for activity. The UT64CAN333x series of transceivers can support up to 120 nodes.
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Figure 2 | Cobham's CAN FD RadTolerant Transceiver[/caption]
Another product is the ManyGate Configurable Logic (figure 3), which provides engineers with a user-configured logic gate or storage element that can be implemented at the designer’s discretion. It also provides silicon efficiency reducing die count.
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Figure 3 | Cobham's ManyGate Configurable Logic Gate[/caption]
Lastly, expanding Cobhams RadHard-by-Design Analog Family, the RHD5964 2.5V Precision Reference (figure 4), provides initial Vref accuracy at 25° C of 2.50 V ±1%. The reference has a maximum temperature coefficient of 35ppm/°C making it an option for DC-DC converters, linear regulators, analog-to-digital converters, and digital-to-analog converters in radiation-hardened space applications.
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Figure 4 | Cobham's RHD5964[/caption]
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