A Study of Radiation Hardening Circuit for the Satellite

The electrical characteristics of solid state devices, such as BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) and MOSFET, are altered by impinging photon radiation and temperature in the space environment. In this paper, firstly, a BJT is tested to ?-radiation and compared with the specifications under the pre-irradiation and the post-irradiation. Secondly, the darlington circuit is designed, which consists of diodes, transistors, and resistors in order to tolerate the worst case and radiation effect. Compared with the interface circuit used in KOMPSAT (Korea Multipurpose Satellite), the darlington circuit achieves performance improvement in the switching time and the output voltage.