Soft-Error Resilient Read Decoupled SRAM With Multi-Node Upset Recovery for Space Applications

TLDR

Space’s high‑energy particles and temperature fluctuations cause single‑event upsets, and conventional 6T SRAM cannot tolerate this harsh environment. The study aims to design a radiation‑hardened SRAM capable of withstanding space’s harsh environment. The authors propose a soft‑error resilient read‑decoupled 12T SRAM cell (SRRD12T) and benchmark its performance against contemporary designs such as RHMN12T, RHMP12T, RHD12T, QUCCE12T, and QUATRO12T across key metrics. SRRD12T recovers from SEUs at any sensitive node and from single‑event multi‑node upsets at its storage node pair, achieves the highest read stability, offers 1.14×/1.17× shorter write delay, lower hold power, and higher write ability than most competitors, albeit with a slightly longer read delay.

Abstract

Space consists of high-energy particles and high-temperature fluctuations, which causes single event upsets (SEUs). Conventional 6T static random access memory (SRAM) is unable to tolerate this harsh environment in space. Therefore, it is necessary to design an SRAM, which can withstand this harsh environment. In order to mitigate SEUs, a radiation-hardened SRAM cell, named soft-error resilient read decoupled 12T (SRRD12T), is presented in this article. To estimate the relative performance of the proposed cell, it is compared with other contemporary designs, such as RHMN12T, RHMP12T, RHD12T, QUCCE12T, and QUATRO12T, over various important design metrics. SRRD12T can not only recover from SEU induced at any of its sensitive nodes but also from single event multi-node upsets (SEMNUs) induced at its storage node pair. Furthermore, due to the read decoupled design of SRRD12T, it exhibits the highest read stability. In addition to these, SRRD12T shows 1.14×/1.17× shorter write delay than RHD12T/RHMP12T. Moreover, SRRD12T consumes lower hold power and exhibits higher write ability than most of the comparison cells. However, these advantages are obtained by exhibiting a slightly longer read delay.