SEU protection design for the prototype readout electronics of MAPS-based STCF inner tracker

Abstract

The Super Tau Charm Facility (STCF) is a high-luminosity electron-positron collider experiment operating at center-of-mass energy of 2–7 GeV. Its primary goal is to explore flavor physics, CP-violations, and investigate physics beyond the Standard Model. The inner tracker (ITK) is a crucial component of the STCF tracking system, which is responsible for detecting particle hits, especially those with low momentum below 100 MeV/c. Its primary objectives include providing high detection efficiency and spatial resolution for charged particle tracks. However, the electronics of ITK is susceptible to single-event upset (SEU) caused by beam-related background. To address this, this paper presents a prototype of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)-based electronics that can detect and automatically repair SEU induced soft errors in its Configuration Random Access Memory (CRAM) and whose Block Random Access Memory (BRAM) has been also subjected to commonly used hardening techniques. Importantly, the prototype's corrective operations do not result in any dead time due to hot redundancy backup. In the laboratory environment, we measured the bit error rate of the data transmission to be lower than 10-12 with a confidence level of 99.99%. Through neutron beam experiments conducted at China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) back-n white neutron source. We demonstrated that the readout electronics can effectively restore correct functionality and promptly rectify soft errors.