CMOS System-on-Chip Spectrometer Processors for Spaceborne Microwave-to-THz Earth and Planetary Science and Radioastronomy

This article presents development of CMOS system-on-chip spectrometer processor for Spaceborne Earth Science, Planetary Science and Astronomy. The developed chip is intended for use in rotational emission spectroscopy observations from microwave to sub-millimeter wavelengths performed from Earth orbiting or deep space exploration spacecraft. The article first provides an overview of rotational spectroscopy for space sciences and highlights some of the important results achieved in Earth science, planetary science, and astronomy. The article then discusses the need for smaller and more compact spectrometer instruments across these three space science areas, which motivates this work. Then key considerations in development of spectrometer processors for space science are discussed including the significance including bandwidth, quantization efficiency and spectral channel shapes. The article then highlights detailed design of the developed spectrometer processor focusing on the many calibration techniques included to allow the chip to adapt to operations in space environments where large temperature ranges and high radiation levels are encountered. Presented measurements demonstrate the spectrometer processor operates up to 12.8 GS/s to provide up to 6.4 GHz of processing bandwidth with a frequency resolution of 8192 spectral channels and an analog resolution of 4 bits while consuming only 3960 mW of total DC power.