Assessing SET Sensitivity of Mixed-Signal Circuits at Early Design Stages

Traditionally, the effects of ionizing radiation have been a problem to solve in digital circuits. In analog circuits, the response of the circuits is often slow compared to the duration of the errors produced by the effects of radiation, so these errors were filtered by the circuit. However, the increasing sensitivity of modern technologies, high performance requirements, as well as the current low design margins make SETs also a problem to solve in current analog and mixed signal circuits. In this paper, a fault injection tool to aid designers in the hardening process at early design phases is presented. This tool performs fault injection in digital and analog elements at different abstraction levels to profit from hardware speed keeping significant results from electric simulation. The solution integrates existing techniques for digital circuits together with specific solutions for analog components. Results of fault injection in analog nodes for a case study are detailed.