Study of Integrated Thermionic Circuits for Aerospace Application.

Abstract : This report describes the study of the applicability of Integrated Thermionic Circuits (ITC) to data processing applications for aerospace systems in which nuclear and high temperature environments may be encountered. The specific systems which were selected as candidates for the study were in the area of aircraft engine control and strapped down or body bound inertial navigation. Limited temperature and mechanical tests were performed on Air Force furnished ITC shift registers and later integrated in an ITC demonstrator unit configured and fabricated to perform a rudimentary computational task. Various digital signal processor architectures including general-purpose (whole number) and special purpose (incremental) were examined and evaluated for the engine control and navigation applications. The results of the study program demonstrate the feasibility of the ITC technology in the implementation of special-purpose processor systems for dedicated applications such as engine control and navigation. The report also includes discussion of an ITC packaging method and recommended additional ITC building blocks which are required in addition to the basic shift register unit. (Author)