Radiation sensor interface circuits can be mounted on sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks to detect radiation signals. They respond quickly to operators and command centers, allowing appropriate decisions to be made to mitigate nuclear power plant accidents. For instance, high-level radiation leaked from a reactor building during a nuclear plant accident can degrade the performance of the radiation sensor interface implemented by integrated circuits due to threshold voltage shift, leakage current change, and noise increase induced by radiation impact events. To obtain reliable signal measurements in the high radiation environment, radiation-hardening technologies must be applied to radiation sensor interface circuits. The radiation-hardened sensor interface circuit proposed in this article exploits a pair of charge-sensitive amplifiers (CSAs) in dual paths to equivalently cancel out the distorted output signals caused by radiation impacts on the circuits. In addition, a low-power, fully differential successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is used to reduce the radiation effects by subtracting the radiation-induced noise of one input from the other. The implemented radiation sensor interface circuit can maintain its performance up to 1.0 mrad (SiO 2 ) of irradiation with only 2.5 mW power consumption, while successfully sensing and transferring the radiation information to the downstream signal-processing network.

中文翻译：

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用于监测核电厂严重事故的抗辐射传感器接口电路


辐射传感器接口电路可以安装在无线传感器网络中的传感器节点上以检测辐射信号。它们对操作员和指挥中心做出快速响应，从而能够做出适当的决策来减轻核电站事故。例如，核电站事故期间从反应堆建筑物泄漏的高水平辐射会由于阈值电压偏移、泄漏电流变化以及辐射冲击事件引起的噪声增加而降低由集成电路实现的辐射传感器接口的性能。为了在高辐射环境下获得可靠的信号测量，辐射传感器接口电路必须采用抗辐射技术。本文提出的抗辐射传感器接口电路利用双路径中的一对电荷敏感放大器（CSA）来等效地消除由于辐射对电路的影响而导致的输出信号失真。此外，还使用低功耗全差分逐次逼近寄存器 (SAR) 模数转换器 (ADC)，通过从一个输入减去另一个输入的辐射引起的噪声来减少辐射效应。所实现的辐射传感器接口电路可以在高达 1.0 mrad (SiO 2 ) 的辐射下保持其性能，功耗仅为 2.5 mW，同时成功感测辐射信息并将其传输到下游信号处理网络。