Circuit recovery under gamma ray radiation

This paper demonstrates a method for functionality recovery due to total ionizing dose (TID) effects. The experiments are performed using a JPL-developed reconfigurable device, a field programmable transistor array (FPTA). The key idea of the approach is to reconfigure a programmable device, in-situ, to compensate, or bypass its degraded or damaged components. This method, demonstrated previously for electron beam radiation, is applied here for circuit recovery under Cobalt 60 sourced gamma rays radiation. Experiments with total radiation dose up to 300kRad show that while the functionality of a variety of circuits is degraded/lost at levels before 200kRad, the correct functionality can be recovered through the proposed evolutionary approach, and the chips are able to survive higher radiation, for several functions in excess of total radiation dose of 250kRad.