Diagnosis of Faults Induced by Radiation and Circuit-Level Design Mitigation Techniques: Experience from VCO and High-Speed Driver CMOS ICs Case Studies

In this paper, we discuss the diagnosis of particle-induced failures in harsh environments such as space and high-energy physics. To address these effects, simulation-before-test and simulation-after-test can be the key points in choosing which radiation hardening by design (RHBD) techniques can be implemented to mitigate or prevent failures. Despite the fact that total ionising dose (TID) has slow but destructive effects overtime on silicon devices, single-event effect (SEE) impulsively disrupts the typical operation of a circuit with temporary or permanent effects. The recently released SpaceFibre protocol drives the current requirements for space applications, and the future upgrade of the LHC experiment scheduled by CERN will require a redesign of the electronic front-end to sustain a radiation level up to the 1 Grad TID level. The effects that these two environments have on two different architectures for high-radiation and high-frequency data transmission are reported, and the efficiency of the mitigation techniques implemented, based on simulations and measurement tests, in the commercial 65 nm technology, are exploited.

RHBD Techniques to Mitigate SEU and SET in CMOS Frequency Synthesizers

This paper presents a thorough study of radiation effects on a frequency synthesizer designed in a 0.18 μ m CMOS technology. In CMOS devices, the effect of a high energy particle impact can be modeled by a current pulse connected to the drain of the transistors. The effects of SET (single event transient) and SEU (single event upset) were analyzed connecting current pulses to the drains of all the transistors and analyzing the amplitude variations and phase shifts obtained at the output nodes. Following this procedure, the most sensitive circuits were detected. This paper proposes a combination of radiation hardening-by-design techniques (RHBD) such as resistor–capacitor (RC) filtering or local circuit-redundancy to mitigate the effects of radiation. The proposed modifications make the frequency synthesizer more robust against radiation.