Low power ASIC design for infrared sensor network inside ARIANE 5 vehicle equipment bay

In this work the design of low power infrared transceiver ASIC with AMS350nm technology is presented. There are two different types of transceiver designs that have been developed. The first design is based on IrDA 9600 baud serial infrared (SIR) standard physical signal layer that uses split-phase Manchester coding technique and the second design is using uni-polar return zero coding (RZ) technique. The prototypes of the circuit are built and tested on a Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) Spartan-3E board provided by Digilent. After finishing the prototype, the ASIC synthesized, manufactured and tested. The infrared transceiver ASIC is intended for infrared sensor communication inside ARIANE launcher. Instead of using commercial infrared transceiver ICs, the ASIC design in this work is used as a blue print for radiation hardened ASIC design that can be qualified for the space environments. Other aspects such as Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) with launcher electrical equipment are also considered in the frame of the ASIC development.