Repeater, Multiplexer and Switch IC for high speed communication

To design a radiation-hardened Integrated Circuit for repeating, multiplexing and switching functions in high-speed link communication.;;

On-board communication via serial link protocols such as SpaceFibre require Serializer/Deserializer (SERDES) at the physical layer, which connects two units (e.g. payload instrument, mass memory) via copper, backplanes, or optical transceivers with each other.Currently, the maximum length of the medium is severely limited for high speed links in the excess of 2 Gbps due to transmission line losses. In addition, costly complex FPGAs and ASICs with high speed serial capability are more exposed to damage in case of fault conditions experienced at one of the end-points.Thus, there is a need to develop a new device providing the repeater function to compensate losses and to prevent fault propagation, and the multiplexer/switch functions to enable robust redundancy configuration. This new IC shall operate with all SERDES compliant to the standard ECSS-E-ST-50-11C ? SpaceFibre standard (data rates of up to at least 6.25 Gbps) but can also be used for other protocols such as SRIO, PCIe and Ethernet.This activity encompasses the following tasks:- requirements consolidation based on user needs.- trade-off between available radiation-hardened chip technologies.- IC design and packaging.- performance characterisation to ensure compliance with ECSS-E-ST-50-11C.- development plan