Characterization and Synthesis of Circuits at Extreme Low Temperatures

This chapter describes circuit evolutionary experiments at extreme low temperatures, including the test of all system components at this extreme environment. Standard circuit designers have their target behavior limited to particular ranges of temperature, which usually does not achieve the extreme temperatures encoutered in some planets of our solar system. Our approach to this problem is the use of reconfigurable devices programmed by adaptive/evolutionary algorithms. Through reconfiguration, the new characteristics of the devices at extreme environment may be fully explored and correct functionality can be recovered. This chapter demonstrates this technique for circuit characterization, evolution and recovery at liquid nitrogen temperatures (-196.6C). In addition, preliminary tests are performed to assess the survivability limitations of the evolutionary processor at low temperatures.