Sandia Labs FY22 Laboratory Directed Research & Development Annual Report

FY22 ANNUAL REPORT

ENABLING NEW MISSION SPACE WITH MINIATURE PROGRAMMABLE DELAY ELEMENT FOR ELECTRONIC WARFARE APPLICATIONS.

Achieving large delays at GHz frequencies with significant bandwidth and programmability is key for applications including radar testers, digital RF memory, and emerging full-duplex communications. While many mission applications desire hundreds of nanoseconds of programmable delay in the signal path, only a maximum of 2 ns of programmable delay had been achieved prior to this project. As a result, these systems relied on either Surface Acoustic Wave devices (lossy and have no programmability) or digital systems (consume watts of power and have limited minimum delay taps). In this project, the team developed a 2.55-448.6 ns programmable delay element using a time-interleaved, multi stage, switched-capacitor approach on a CMOS integrated circuit covering a span of 0.2-2 GHz

with 4 mm 2 area, consuming < 100 milliwatt and operating over a full temperature range. The approach departed prior delay line approaches and exceeded state of the art by project end by 58x in maximum programmable delay, 9x in area efficiency, and 2x in bandwidth. The device is enabling new mission space in tagging, tracking, and locating and electronic warfare applications and has seen interest in consumer cellular applications. This project was done in collaboration with Sandia Alliance partner University of Texas at Austin and supported by a graduate student. One publication on the project was an Industry Best Paper Award Finalist at the 2022 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium. This represented Sandia’s first-ever accepted paper at IEEE RFIC. (PI: Travis Forbes)

Left: Programmable delay element device. Right: Maximum delay achieved vs. area efficiency scatter plot of prior art

RADIATION-HARD, HIGH-VOLTAGE, CHIP-SCALE POWER CONVERTER DELIVERS LARGE Heterogeneous integration refers to the integration

the aggregate, provides improved operating characteristics. Numerous high-consequence systems and national security applications have

of separately manufactured components into a higher-level assembly package that, in

advanced high-voltage components that rely on bulky and heavy power converters. This project uses advancements

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Model of original high-voltage power converter (left) compared to chip-scale power converter (right) shows reduction in scale for similar capabilities.