Design of an anti‐irradiation beam‐steering unit based on ASIC circuit

There are a large number of high‐energy particles in the space. These high‐energy particles induce a single‐event upset effect on DSP, FPGA, and other programmable digital controllers inside the beam‐steering unit, which can produce unpredictable and erroneous influences, thereby reducing the reliability of space‐borne‐phased array radars. In order to solve the above problems, this study presents a design of beam‐steering unit based on a kind of application‐specific integrated circuit (ASIC). By using the advantages of ASIC circuits such as strong radiation resistance, high integration, and low power consumption, this solution adopts an anti‐irradiation ASIC chip as a controller, and anti‐irradiation RS422 transceivers are used to complete interface conversion for receiving data and transmitting data. The beam refreshing and telemetry functions between the beam control computer and the 24 microwave modules are realised finally. The test result shows that the phase distribution time is <30 μs when the clock is 3.125 MHz, and the falling edge of sampling pulse is located at half the length of a data symbol, ensuring data hold time long enough to sample correctly.