Highly Stable Low Power Radiation Hardened Memory-by-Design SRAM for Space Applications
Soumitra Pal, Dodla Divya Sri, Wing‐Hung Ki, Aminul Islam
Abstract
In space, due to high energy particles, which cause single event upsets (SEUs), the traditional 6T SRAM cell becomes more susceptible to soft-error. In order to address this, a radiation hardened memory-by-design 10T (RHMD10T) SRAM cell is proposed in this brief. The relative strength of RHMD10T is estimated by comparing it with other contemporary cells such as QUATRO10T, QUCCE10T, QUATRO12T, QUCCE12T, NS10T and PS10T over various major design metrics. RHMD10T exhibits 1.09×/ 1.16×/ 1.26× shorter read delay than QUCCE10T/ QUATRO10T/ NS10T. RHMD10T has the highest read stability and can tolerate the highest amount of critical charge than all other comparison cells. RHMD10T consumes the lowest hold power than all other comparison cells, except NS10T. In addition, RHMD10T is the least susceptible to SEU, except QUCCE12T. All these aforementioned improvements of RHMD10T are obtained at a cost of slightly longer write delay and lower write ability.