Loops by Design
Content
What is Radiation?
The emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as
moving subatomic particles.
The main source of Radiation is Sun.
Electronic equipment on board all spacecrafts is exposed to
this radiation which can reduce the lifetime of a craft and
even cause mission failure.
Most important effect of TID is the trapping of charges within the oxide,
that are exposed to ionizing radiation.
PLL Operation
Digital PLL is less sensitive to radiation. Digital PLL have many advantages
such as lower cost, easier fabrication, drift-free components and absence
of tolerance problems.
Phase Detector
Frequency Divider
Time-to-Digital converter
Startup Calibration
The various parameters that influence the performance of a digital PLL are DCAO
resolution (fLSB), TDC resolution (dT ), update frequency (FR), proportional gain
(), integral gain (), normalizing gain (Gn) and the division ratio (N).
A variation in Kdig as a result of TID would modify the loop bandwidth and the
damping of the system. A calibration step would involve keeping Kdig independent
of the environment.
This can be achieved by modifying the normalizing gain Gn to compensate for
variations in dT and fLSB and requires the estimation of fLSB and dT.
Calibration
The estimation scheme requires the implementation of a N/N+1 divider.
Such a divider can be chosen to divide by N or N + 1. First, the PLL would
be allowed to lock for a division ratio N and the control word output of the
digital PLL would be recorded as V .
N
ctrl
Fr / Flsb V N 1 V N
ctrl
ctrl
After that, the division ratio would be switched to N + 1. The PLL would be
G
allowed to lock again. The new control word would be recorded as V .
N 1
ctrl
The period of the DCAO measured using the TDC would give the quantity
Tvco/dT . We know Tvco is equal to TR/N. This measurement would
estimate the value of TR/NdT.
nom
Gn Kdig
{Ndt / TR }{FR / f LSB}
Conclusion
TID Effect the threshold voltage and gate leakage current.
Single event transients on the frequency divider, phase detector and the
loop filter are most serious. It looses the phase lock and required time to
restore it and also make undesired the parasitic thyristor in Circuits.
Calibration is used for prevention of TID. Single event effects in frequency
dividers and phase detectors can be prevented through the employment of
redundancy and majority voting.
Using Majority voting increases chip area as well as power so trade-off
between majority voting and power enclosed such that PLL works properly
in Radiation Environment.
Time to Digital Convertor is most challenging component to design for
Digital Controlled oscillator and assures that make it radiation hardened for
proper function of PLL.