Architectures of bulk built-in current sensors for detection of transient faults in integrated circuits

PS-BBICS: Pulse stretching bulk built-in current sensor for on-chip measurement of single event transients

“…1, have been proposed [11][12][13]. The operation of BBICS has been verified with both simulations and laser/irradiation experiments for bulk CMOS technology nodes from 28 nm to 130 nm [11][12][13]. In practical implementations, the area overhead due to addition of BBICS is an important design constraint.…”

“…Various alternative BBICS designs with improved sensitivity, but with more transistors than the variant in Fig. 1, have been proposed [11][12][13]. The operation of BBICS has been verified with both simulations and laser/irradiation experiments for bulk CMOS technology nodes from 28 nm to 130 nm [11][12][13].…”

“…A typical solution is the bulk built-in current sensor (BBICS), which generates a transient voltage pulse, i.e., an SET, as a response to particle-induced current. The use of BBICS [9][10][11][12][13] for soft error detection offers several advantages. First, these sensors are distributed across the chip, allowing to detect the locations of particle strikes, and subsequently apply the error correction only to the affected logic.…”

“…Due to variable sensitivity of on-chip logic, the sensors can be connected only to the most sensitive circuits, thus minimizing the area overhead. The analysis presented in [12] shows that the area overhead may vary from 12 to 36 %.…”

“…Numerous solutions for soft error monitoring in space have been proposed. The most common sensors are PN/PIN diodes or photodiodes [3,4], stand-alone SRAMs [5,6], 3D NAND flash detectors [7], acoustic wave detectors [8], and bulk built-in current sensors (BBICS) [9][10][11][12][13]. We have proposed two alternative solutions: embedded SRAM [14] and custom-sized inverter chain [15,16].…”