Experimental Study and Spice Simulation of Cmos Inverters Latch-Up Effects Due to High Power Microwave Interference

Abstract

Abstract-Experimental study and SPICE simulation of CMOS digital circuits latch-up effects due to high power microwave interference are reported in this paper. As a traditional inherent destruction phenomenon, latch-up effect may jeopardize the correct function of the circuits, and could be triggered in various ways such as ESD pulse, cosmic ray, heavy ion particles etc. Through the directly injected experimental investigation of CMOS inverters, it is shown that the single short high power RF pulse not only could disturb and upset the inverters output logic voltage, but also might trigger CMOS latch-up effects. It is observed that the RF pulse leading to inverters latch-up effects have energy threshold characteristics, which means that the injected RF pulse power is inversely proportional to the pulse width. SPICE simulations indicated that the inverters maximum static consumption current in latch-up state will increase up to 6600 multiples compared to the normal value when input logic state is high. With the device scaling down, higher integration and higher working frequency, the power consumption problem plays a significant role, which makes CMOS logic circuits more vulnerable due to the latch-up effects under high power microwave threats.

Modeling and understanding of the frequency dependent HPM upset susceptibility of the CMOS inverter

“…The susceptibility level for personal computers (PCs) with different specifications has been evaluated and the relationship between the upset threshold and the frequency was found to fit the same trend [11]. Experimental studies on the microwave vulnerability of CMOS inverter were carried out with regard to pulse frequency from 800 MHz to 4 GHz, indicating that the electromagnetic susceptibility decreases significantly with the frequency [12].…”

“…The susceptibility level to HPM with the dependence of pulse width, pulse frequency, pulse repetition frequency (PRF), and the diversity of semiconductor devices have been widely studied. As one of the key pulse properties, pulse frequency has been confirmed to have a significant impact on the upset and damage effects [8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

A New Diode-Clamped Multilevel Inverter for Capacitor Voltage Balancing

“…Compared with conventional two-level converters, multilevel converters show great advantages such as: high power quality of waveforms, low switching losses, high-voltage capability and low electromagnetic interference (EMI) [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In general, multilevel converters can be divided into three types: diode-clamped multilevel converters, flying capacitor multilevel converters and cascaded multilevel converters with separated DC sources [10][11][12][13].…”

Design of the High Efficiency Circular Horn Feed for High-Power Microwave System

“…The maximum power obtained with a single-mode relativistic BWO in the X band was 3 GW with ∼ 100 J energy in a single pulse [3]. The efficient radiation of the intense electromagnetic wave generated by HPM source is an indispensable premise of such a HPM application as the directed energy weapon (DEW), radar system [4,5].…”