Test and Qualification of a Fault Tolerant FPGA based Antenna System for Space Applications

EZEQUIEL BRAC; PABLO A. FERREYRA; RAOUL VELAZCO; CARLOS ALBERTO MARQUÉS

Buzios, Brasil

Workshop; LATW 2009; 2009

IEEE

This work presents a Fault Tolerant FPGA based Active Antenna system intended to be used in the space environment. The proposed design can control the electromagnetic radiation pattern emitted by an antenna array in real time with high reliability levels. The FPGA is a Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) device based on the Anti fuse technology. The design is optimized to reduce the area overhead allowing the control of multiple antennas by means of a single FPGA. The Fault Tolerance and high reliability achieved with the design is shown by means of a new test methodology.