Partial evaluation based triple modular redundancy for single event upset mitigation

Abstract

We present a design technique, Partial evaluation-based Triple Modular Redundancy (PTMR), for hardening combinational circuits against Single Event Upsets (SEU). The basic ideas of partial redundancy and temporal TMR are used together to harden the circuit against SEUs. The concept of partial redundancy is used to eliminate the gates whose outputs can be determined in advance. We have designed a fault insertion simulator to evaluate partial redundancy technique on the designs from MCNC′91 benchmark. Experimental results demonstrate that we can reduce the area overhead by up to 39.18% and on average 17.23% of the hardened circuit when compared with the traditional TMR. For circuits with a large number of gates and less number of outputs, there is a significant savings in area. Smaller circuits or circuits with a large number of outputs also show improvement in area savings for increased rounding range.