1 Abstract

As aerospace technology continues to develop, the industry has seen a dramatic increase in the lifetime of satellites. With this increase, the operational lifetime of many satellites now surpasses that of the telecom standards they were developed around. Because of this, the need for re-programmability in space applications has also risen [1]. Microsemi® is one company that addresses this need with their SRAM-based FPGA, the RTG4™. Modern FPGAs tend to operate at lower voltages and higher currents than their predecessors, and the RTG4 is no exception. FPGA power supply requirements have become more demanding and features such as soft-start and sequencing are required to avoid large inrush currents that could potentially create problems in the regulators upstream. This application note demonstrates how TI's space qualified power portfolio can be used to power RTG4-based designs.