Reduced-Precision Redundancy for Reliable FPGA Communications Systems in High-Radiation Environments

Author

Pratt, Brian ; Fuller, Matthew ; Rice, Matthew ; Wirthlin, Michael

Author_Institution

Commun. Syst. - West, L-3 Commun., Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Volume

49

Issue

1

fYear

2013

fDate

Jan. 2013

Firstpage

369

Lastpage

380

Abstract

Triple modular redundancy (TMR) is the traditional mitigation technique for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) subject to single-event upsets (SEUs) in high-radiation environments. Reduced-precision redundancy (RPR) as an alternative to TMR for communications systems is demonstrated. RPR reduces the number of "catastrophic" SEUs in several simple communications receivers by over 95%, thus increasing the mean time to failure (MTTF) by 25 to 99 times, while consuming less than half of the resources that TMR does in most cases.

Keywords

failure analysis; field programmable gate arrays; radiation hardening (electronics); receivers; redundancy; reliability; telecommunication network reliability; MTTF; RPR; SEU; TMR; communications receivers; field-programmable gate array mitigation; high-radiation environments; mean time to failure; reduced-precision redundancy; reliable FPGA communications systems; single-event upsets; triple modular redundancy; Bit error rate; Field programmable gate arrays; Finite impulse response filter; Hardware; Matched filters; Redundancy; Tunneling magnetoresistance;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9251

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TAES.2013.6404109

Filename

6404109