Aerospace, Military & Defence


properties, which makes them particularly well suited for adaptive computing environments deployed in orbit.


Considerations for radiation performance


The electrical performance alone is not sufficient to justify the use of a switching technology in


spacecraft systems. Radiation hardness is a major constraint in selection of all active electronic components used in orbital environment.


Radiation hardened GaN devices developed for space applications have shown robustness to total ionizing dose exposure and to single event effects due to charged particle interactions. The preservation of stable switching characteristics under such conditions is essential for reliable long duration mission operation.


Previous generations of radiation hardened silicon power devices often suffered from performance compromises in order to achieve acceptable radiation margins, but GaN-based devices can provide both high electrical performance and environmental resilience simultaneously. This capability is an important step forward for power architecture designers who need to support increasingly demanding compute platforms without compromising on reliability requirements.


The availability of radiation hardened GaN switching devices also allows easier implementation of high frequency converter topologies that would be difficult to implement with conventional radiation qualified silicon components. As spacecraft subsystems become more complex electrically, this flexibility becomes increasingly valuable at the system architecture level.


Thermal performance and system- level implications


The improvements in the efficiency of the converters cannot be evaluated only from the electrical point of view in spacecraft engineering. Thermal management requirements are a major driver of spacecraft mass and system complexity. Any reduction in switching losses at the transistor level cascades through the entire spacecraft design, reducing the burden on thermal transport structures and radiative cooling surfaces. GaN switching devices allow you to run at higher current densities in a smaller package footprint than comparable silicon devices. This improvement enables the implementation


www.cieonline.co.uk


of voltage regulation stages able to power large adaptive processors in compact board-level layouts according to mechanical standards like SpaceVPX. As computing density grows, maintaining this level of integration is critical for system scalability.


The electrical efficiency is strongly coupled to the structural and thermal constraints in spacecraft platforms. Therefore, the use of GaN based switching architectures will not only optimize the regulator performance but also the overall spacecraft optimization. Reduced power dissipation translates into reduced cooling infrastructure, leading to reduced structural mass and increased payload allocation efficiency. It is these system-level interactions that are driving spacecraft architecture decisions more and more by improvements in switching device technology.


GaN power architectures integrated with adaptive SpaceVPX computing systems


Recent SpaceVPX processing platforms designed to support heterogeneous onboard workloads illustrate the convergence of adaptive computing and radiation- tolerant GaN power delivery architectures. Alpha Data offers platforms such as the ADM-VB630 and ADM-VA601 which incorporate adaptive


Figure 4: EPC Space solutions implemented on the Alpha-Data evaluation board


computing devices based on AMD Versal SoC architectures in small ruggedized form factors for deployment in aerospace.


Efficient high-frequency voltage regulation stages are required to deliver the large core currents demanded by adaptive processors within the mechanical constraints of SpaceVPX architectures. Radiation-hardened GaN switching transistors such as EPC Space’s EPC7019GC enable compact, high- current core power architectures capable of reliable operation in radiation-exposed orbital environments. The EPC7019GC device supports operation up to 40 V with continuous drain currents up to 90 A, features very low RDS(on)


(≈4.5 mΩ) and low total


gate charge (≈27 nC), and is packaged in a compact space-qualified FSMD-G footprint. These characteristics make it particularly well suited for high-frequency, high-density POL converters and multiphase core regulators in


next-generation space processing platforms. The partnership demonstrates how


advances in radiation-hardened GaN switching technology are enabling the deployment of more powerful adaptive processing platforms in spaceborne computing systems. These power architectures are not about incremental improvements in efficiency but are part of the enabling infrastructure that will be needed to support scalable onboard intelligence in next- generation satellite missions.


Power architectures for supporting distributed onboard intelligence The trend toward on-board intelligence is altering expectations about spacecraft autonomy. Instead of providing raw telemetry data to ground stations for processing, contemporary satellites are doing local analysis of sensor data streams more and more. This capability has direct applications to anomaly detection, adaptive communications management and payload coordination. These workloads require computing platforms capable of sustained high throughput under strict energy constraints. Radiation tolerant GaN switching devices enable this capability by improving the efficiency of the power delivery infrastructure required to continuously operate adaptive processing fabrics.


As spacecraft architectures move to distributed constellations where processing tasks are distributed over multiple orbital nodes, the need for efficient onboard power conversion will increase. In this sense, improvements in switching efficiency directly enable the viability of distributed orbital processing approaches that minimize dependence on ground- based computation resources.


https://epc.space/ Components in Electronics May 2026 37


Figure 2: ADM-VB630: A 3U Space VPX platform featuring the AMD Versal AI Edge XQRVE2302 Adaptive SoC for space applications; reference full radiation tolerant power supply using SEP grade parts from TI and GaN FETs from EPC Space


Figure 3: ADM-VA601: A 6U Space VPX reference plat- form for the AMD Versal AI Core XQRVC1902 Adaptable SoC platform for space; reference full radiation tolerant power supply using SEP grade parts from TI and GaN FETs from EPC Space.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48