Radiation-Hardened-by-Design (RHBD) Digital Design Approaches: A Case Study on an 8051 Microcontroller

Advanced satellites and/or high-level (levels 4 and 5) autonomous vehicles demand high reliability integrated circuits (ICs) with ultra-low error rates. One solution is to use radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) design techniques to mitigate the error rates against the single-event-effects (arising from radiation effects). This paper first provides an overview on several present-art RHBD design techniques, and then propose an RHBD design methodology, spanning from the library cell development, circuit simulation and synthesis, to the layout implementation, to realize digital circuits. We further demonstrate an 8051 microcontroller with the proposed design methodology, and evaluate the 8051 microcontroller prototype (@ 65nm CMOS) with irradiation tests. Our 8051 microcontroller is error-free with 10 MeV.mg/cm2, meeting our targeted specifications for Low Earth Orbit applications. When under high Linear Transfer Energy (> 51.5 MeV.mg/cm2) tests, the 8051 microcontroller does suffer errors. We further study/analyze which part of the 8051 microcontroller to cause errors, and provide recommendations.