A robust radiation resistant SRAM cell for space and military applications

Abstract

Many charged particles in space, including α-particles, neutrons, heavy ions, electrons, and photons, wreak havoc on the stability and reliability of memory circuits. In addition, these high-energy particles produce an ion track within the memory chip, which disrupts the storage bit. Standard 6T SRAM cannot withstand this upset condition. This paper presents a novel RRS-14T radiation-resistant SRAM memory cell with redundant nodes and a polar design to address the soft error issue. The performance of the proposed RRS-14T memory cell is compared to the performance of existing radiation-resistant memory cells, such as RHS-14T, RHMC-12T, NRHC-14T, QCCS-12T, HRRT-13T, and RHBD-13T. The RRS-14T cell protects against single and multiple-node disruptions. The read stability of the proposed RRS-14T memory cell is 2.83x/ 1.5x/ 2.10x/ 1.34x/ 3.38x/ 1.68x greater than the existing RHS-14T/ RHMC-12T/ NRHC-14T/ QCCS-12T/ HRRT-13T/ RHBD-13T memory cells. Moreover, 1.08x/ 1.27x/ 1.06x/ 1.05x/ 1.16x/ 1.07x larger write trip voltage than RHS-14T/ RHMC-12T/ NRHC-14T/ QCCS-12T/ HRRT-13T/ RHBD-13T memory cells. In addition, the write access time, hold power, and critical charge are enhanced when the supply voltage is at 1 V.