Radiation Tolerant 6.25 Gbps 850nm Optical Transceiver

The key element of the next generation high-speed intra-satellite serial data communication link are the optical transceivers. Not only should these meet the high-reliability requirement for space with regard to thermal vacuum, mechanical vibration and shock, but also survive reliably in a radiation environment. At VTT the SolidOpto SPFI-(003)-6G 6.25 Gbps optical transceiver has been specifically engineered for this space environment. This device has successfully passed mechanical vibration and shock, thermal vacuum and total dose radiation up to 100krad. The first SEE radiation tests on this device have been performed and are the topic of this paper. The radiation tests demonstrate that this device is free of destructive radiation events. With a dedicated state-of-the-art high-speed radiation test set-up the BER as well as the SET rate as function of LET and flux could be determined for the optical transceiver operating at 5Gbps. Threshold and cross-section both for receiver and transmitter could be determined as well as the SET pulse-width distribution. The analysis of these results allows the predicted performance of this optical transceiver in space as a function of the implemented transmitted data encoding. Furthermore the result of this work demonstrates the viability of the operational use in space of the VTT SolidOpto SPFI(003)-6G 6.25 Gbps optical transceiver as one of the first of the devices of its kind.