Microsemi Corporation was chosen to supply their master reference oscillator for the U.S. Air Force's Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellite program for which Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor. SBIRS, considered one of the nation's highest priority space programs, provides global, persistent, infrared surveillance capabilities to meet 21st century demands in four national security mission areas: missile warning, missile defense, technical intelligence and battle space awareness.
SBIRS, the next-generation program replacing the 1970s Defense Support Program constellation, delivers timely, reliable and accurate missile warning and infrared surveillance information to the president, the secretary of defense, combatant commanders, the intelligence community and other key decision makers. The system enhances global missile launch detection capabilities, supports the nation's ballistic missile defense system, expands the country's technical intelligence gathering capacity and bolsters situational awareness for warfighters on the battlefield.
The SBIRS satellite includes highly sophisticated scanning and staring sensors that will deliver improved infrared sensitivity and a reduction in area revisit times over the current constellation. The scanning sensor will provide a wide area surveillance of missile launches and natural phenomena across the earth, while the staring sensor will be used to observe smaller areas of interest with superior sensitivity.
Microsemi has been developing space-grade crystal oscillators for over 40 years. Their products provide highly accurate performance as well as an unsurpassed combination of small size, low power and best-in-class offerings for applications where frequency, stability and phase noise are critical.
In addition to providing Lockheed Martin with the ultra-stable master oscillator, they have supplied radiation-tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), custom power supplies and radiation-tolerant space-grade diodes, transistors and MOSFETs for the SBIRS satellite system. They are scheduled to begin delivery of production models of their master reference oscillators in late 2016, which will include a variety of the company's discrete devices, as well as their radiation-tolerant RTAX-S FPGAs.
Microsemi Leading Space Innovation for More than Half a Century
With one of the most comprehensive portfolios of space products, they provides radiation-tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), rad-hard mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), radiation-hardened DC-to-DC converters, precision time and frequency solutions, linear and POL hybrids, custom hybrid solutions, and rad-hard discretes including the broadest portfolio of JANS Class diodes and bipolar products. The company continues to innovate and expand their portfolio, most recently adding the new LX7730 radiation-tolerant telemetry controller IC providing key functions for sensor monitoring, attitude and payload control, as well as their RTG4™ high-speed signal processing radiation-tolerant FPGA family. The RTG4's reprogrammable flash technology offers complete immunity to radiation-induced configuration upsets in the harshest radiation environments, requiring no configuration scrubbing, unlike SRAM FPGA technology.
