5 Gbps Radiation-Hardened Low-Power Pulse Serial Link

Presented is a high-speed, radiation hardened by design, physical layer data link. The 5 Gbps link is implemented in an 130 nm process occupying relatively small area and having low power (60 mW total). The data rate, radiation hardness, and power consumption are all enabled by asynchronous circuits utilizing a pulse-base wire encoding that, in combination, dramatically simplifies data recovery while increasing timing tolerances in both transmitter and receiver designs. This means that neither the transmitter nor the receiver uses a high-speed clock, instead, small asynchronous state machines handle the transmit and receive functions as well as serialization and deserialization. These small structures contribute to radiation hardness by allowing for efficient modular redundancy at high speeds. The design is also hardened for long environment lifetime (very high total irritated dose of greater than 300MRad Si). This paper specifically addresses the design implementation trade-offs and high-speed design methodology for the link with simulation results as well as preliminary test data.