Comparing Digital Modulation Schemes in RF Receivers for Bit Errors Induced by Single-Event Transients in the Low-Noise Amplifier

Standard digital modulation schemes are compared for receiver-level single-event upset (SEU) sensitivity. Single-event transients (SETs) on the wideband silicon–germanium (SiGe) low-noise amplifier (LNA) carrying on–off keying (OOK), binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), and frequency-shift keying (2-FSK) modulated data were induced using laser pulses. Both the modulation scheme and its detection method had a significant impact on the SEU sensitivity of the receiver. The SET sensitivity and noise sensitivity of the modulation schemes and demodulation techniques were correlated. Therefore, designing a receiver to be more robust to noise inherently makes it more robust to SETs. For space missions that anticipate a high flux of radiation, taking SETs into account when choosing the radio frequency (RF) modulation scheme and the demodulation method may be important to avoid underestimating the total bit-error rate (BER) when other system trade-offs are compared against the system BER.