Low-power CMOS digital electronics for radio, mm-wave and sub-mm astrophysics

Here we present the characterization of the performance of a novel design for a digital spectrometer that could be used for high resolution cm/mm/submm spectroscopy. The CMOS ASIC spectrometer design, developed at JPL and UCLA, has dramatically lower power consumption than current approaches that generally employ Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Particularly for space missions and for small satellites, power consumption is a major issue. The order of magnitude lower power consumption of the ASIC approach is thus critical for future missions employing large-format focal plane arrays. Our task was to evaluate this 1024 channel, 1.3-GHz bandwidth CMOS spectrometer in terms of stability and filter shape. The chip was to be tested largely at half-maximum speed to allow for use of the polyphase filter bank. The results of this testing show that the ASIC spectrometer can be made to perform largely as expected based on its design parameters, however, they suggest that more testing of the spectrometer chip could be beneficial. Follow-up tests and newer versions of the chip are discussed at the end of the proceeding.