When studying the behavior of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) under radiation, the most commonly used methodology consists in evaluating the SEE crosssection of its elements individually. However, this method does not allow the estimation of the device failure rate when using a custom design. An alternative approach based on benchmark circuits is presented in this article. It allows standardized application-level testing, which makes the comparison between different FPGAs easier. Moreover, it allows the evaluation of the FPGA failure rate independently from the application that will be implemented. The employed benchmark circuit belongs to the ITC'99 benchmark suite developed at Politecnico di Torino. Using the proposed methodology, the response of four FPGAs, the NG-Medium, the ProASIC3, the SmartFusion2 and the PolarFire, was evaluated under high-energy protons. Radiation tests with thermal neutrons were also conducted on the PolarFire to assess its potential sensitivity to them. Moreover, its performances in terms of TID effects have been evaluated by measuring the degradation of the propagation delay during irradiation.
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