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The HORIZON funded project SCOPS started in January 2023.

To face the increased needs on current consumptions, some new technologies are introduced in power conversion stages (mainly owing to the introduction of GaN transistors).

Few years ago, the Si Transistors as switches was the device limiting the performance and the market was dominated by US manufacturers in a monopoly for space application with high costs (need of specific design and foundries to face the radiation environment). This also lead to EU dependence to US export control restrictions. The introduction of GaN transistors allow to get better performances and also EU non dependence as some initiative promote European supply chain (as shown in H2020 EleGaNt ongoing project).

But now, the main integration & performance limitation is now the controller of the power stages available in the market :

– Performance : limited switching frequency operation due to :

• Device technology : most of them in the market are in bipolar technology (slow & power consumption)
• Radiation sensitivity : heavy ions can cause transients that are to be filtered (slowing down the performances)
• Power consumption of the controller itself

Functionality :

Many functions are set owing to external parts (fine analog tuning, switching The SCOPS (Scalable Controller for Power Sources) This

project sets one clear and measurable main objective:

To design and evaluate the performance in space environment of Application Specific Integrated Circuit, named SCOPS, to control several power supply phases in parallel, using non-dependent supply chain.

To do so, it is necessary that SCOPS provides the Space Community with:

1. A flexible SCOPS Circuit that overcomes the limitations of existing controllers in terms of phase paralleling possibilities, performance, feature and radiation robustness.
2. A fair commercialization and intellectual property management to allow the purchase of the SCOPS outcomes at a competitive cost in front of its non-European alternatives for space applications.

More information can be found here

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT: SCOPS is a project Funded by the European Union