Integrated circuit requirements for high power space power conditioning equipment

Projections of future spacecraft operational characteristics indicate that power conditioning requirements will become extremely demanding with respect to output power level, regulation, control, sequencing, and reliability. New approaches for design of power conditioning equipment capable of meeting such requirements are currently under development at a number of government and contractor laboratories. This paper examines areas where improvements in integrated circuit state-of-the-art are desired to overcome special design problems associated with the development of such equipment. Special emphasis is placed on the design problems associated with series inverter circuit currently being mechanized for providing regulated power and controls for an ion thruster. Such a circuit is relatively complex and is used to indicate typical integrated circuit requirements to be encountered in future Aerospace applications.