TID Evaluation System With On-Chip Electron Source and Programmable Sensing Mechanisms on FPGA

Abstract

Commercial-off-the-shelf system-on-chip field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are gaining momentum in space applications and their radiation characterization becomes crucial. This paper targets a cost-effective test setup and procedures for total ionization dose testing of miniaturized complex devices. We combine hardware and software techniques to perform on-chip irradiation via a <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">90</sup> Sr/ <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">90</sup> Y electron source and assess in detail the degradation of complex SRAM FPGAs. Our methodology combines multiple sensing mechanisms with correlation analysis to facilitate modeling of effects and tuning of a custom ring-oscillator network for future autonomous in-flight use. Focusing on 28-nm Zynq7000 devices, our results show Mrad total ionizing dose tolerance with parameters’ degradation in the area of 5%, zero functional errors, and nonuniform spatial response.