ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one research effort conducted jointly between Kansas State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Peregrine Semiconductor with this goal in mind: development of technologies for a UHF microtransceiver capable of operating without a warm box or extensive radiation shielding on the surface of Mars. The electronic bays themselves are often referred to as “warm electronic boxes” since they are configured to keep both batteries and electronic components above the range of temperatures specified for operation of industrial/military electronics. The goal of the micro-transceiver research was to develop technologies for implementing radios that are interoperable with Electra or Electra-lite radios aboard orbiters, while being one to two orders of magnitude smaller in terms of size, weight, and power. Narrowband radio receivers adopting the classic super-heterodyne architecture typically employ surface acoustic wave or monolithic crystal filters for channel selection. In the micro-transceiver project, Peregrine Semiconductor’s commercial 0.5 µm SOS process was used.
