Reconfiguration of Analog Electronics for Extreme Environments

This paper argues in favor of adaptive reconJiguration as a technique to expand the operational envelope of analog electronics for extreme environments (EE). On a reconfigurable device, although component parameters change in EE, as long as devices still operate, albeit degraded, a new circuit design, suitable for new parameter values, may be mapped into the reconJigurable structure to recover the initial circuit function. Laboratory demonstrations of this technique were performed by JPL in several independent experiments in which bulk CMOS reconJgurable devices were exposed to, and degraded by, high temperatures (-300°C) or radiation (3OOkRad TID), and then recovered by adaptive reconJguration using evolutionary search algorithms.