Mitigating Radiation Effects on ICs at Device and Architectural Levels: the SpaceWire Router Case Study

The mitigation of radiation effects on integrated circuits is discussed in this paper with reference to the design of hardware macrocells for reliable high-speed networking based on the SpaceWire standard target applications include on-board distributed control systems for aerospace, military, avionics or automotive scenarios. Due to CMOS technology scaling, digital ICs are becoming more susceptible to radiation effects, both total ionization dose and single event effects. This traditional issue of space and military systems is becoming a concern also for terrestrial electronic systems such as commercial avionics, high-radiation industrial environments and safety-critical automotive control systems. To optimize the trade-off between increased radiation- robustness and extra IC costs in terms of area, power consumption and weight, we present several ad-hoc design solutions both at device and architectural levels. As a result a single-device SpaceWire Router with 8 links and data-rates up to 100 Mbits/s is achieved featuring a TID of 300 krad and immunity to upset up to a linear energy transfer threshold greater than 60 MeV mg/cm².