Abstract
This paper presents a thorough study of radiation effects on a frequency synthesizer designed in a 0.18 μ m CMOS technology. In CMOS devices, the effect of a high energy particle impact can be modeled by a current pulse connected to the drain of the transistors. The effects of SET (single event transient) and SEU (single event upset) were analyzed connecting current pulses to the drains of all the transistors and analyzing the amplitude variations and phase shifts obtained at the output nodes. Following this procedure, the most sensitive circuits were detected. This paper proposes a combination of radiation hardening-by-design techniques (RHBD) such as resistor–capacitor (RC) filtering or local circuit-redundancy to mitigate the effects of radiation. The proposed modifications make the frequency synthesizer more robust against radiation.
Highlights
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are used in a large number of applications due to their known properties such as low cost, low power consumption, small size, flexibility, etc
This paper focuses on single event transient (SET) and single event upset (SEU)
This paper presents a comprehensive study of the effects of SETs and SEUs on a frequency synthesizer for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
Summary
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are used in a large number of applications due to their known properties such as low cost, low power consumption, small size, flexibility, etc. SETs occur when a particle impacts near or through a PN junction creating a transient pulse [4] This temporary voltage or current disturbance at a circuit node produces amplitude variations and phase shifts that worsen the signal-to-noise ratio and could cause a change in the circuit state. In [5,6,7,8], the effects of space radiation on a phase-locked loop (PLL) and frequency synthesizer were studied, but no RHBD techniques were presented.
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