The design of bio-inspired ESD protection model for digital circuits based on cell structure

Abstract

As the semiconductor feature size decreases and the number of transistors on a single chip increases, digital circuits are frequently used in harsh and complex electromagnetic interference (EMI) environments. Typical protection problems are gradually prominent, such as malfunctions, performance degradation and destructions in component and/or system. This paper proposed a bio-inspired model to fulfil the requirements of digital circuits’ protection performance. Firstly, extensive experiments have been carried out and are presented here to simulate the process of field program gate array (FPGA) chips damaged by human body model (HBM) electrostatic discharge (ESD), applying the contact discharge method. And then, this paper builds the functional fault model of the above process and verifies the similarity in the aftermath of damaging electrical and biological systems. Thus for electronic system design, we proposed the virtual cell model with redundancy structure, self-organising and self-healing operational methodology which is built upon artificial evolution. Finally, we implemented Markov model to analyse the steady-state stability of the virtual cell model in order to prove its durability when it comes to heavy and frequent ESD damage.