Using Software-Defined Radios to Investigate Radiation Effects on RF Devices

This paper presents a software-defined radio-based test setup for the radiation effects characterization of radio frequency (RF) devices with a dedicated focus on RF amplifiers. The proposed test methodology shall allow a cost-efficient and flexible test architecture to evaluate RF devices under radiation condition, specifically under particle bombardment causing single event effects, that are essentially for space applications. The performance of the proposed setup is presented and compared with state-of-the-art methodologies.