A Fast Simulation Method for Evaluating the Single-Event Effect in Aerospace Integrated Circuits

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science

Background:

• Integrated circuit technology advancements necessitate robust reliability assessments for aerospace applications.
• Single-event effects (SEE) pose a significant threat to the integrity of aerospace integrated circuits.
• Traditional fault injection simulations are inefficient due to masking effects and the one-fault-per-execution approach.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the efficiency of simulating single-event effects (SEE) in aerospace integrated circuits.
• To address the limitations of traditional and general multi-point fault injection methods.
• To develop a method that accurately identifies error-causing faults even with multiple injections.

Main Methods:

• Proposed an improved multi-point fault injection technique for computer simulations.
• Implemented a workload execution strategy that allows for multiple fault injections per run.
• Developed a fault grouping mechanism to pinpoint specific error-inducing faults when errors occur.

Main Results:

• The improved method significantly accelerates simulation processes.
• Successfully verified multiple faults within a single workload execution.
• Enabled accurate identification of faults responsible for errors through the grouping method.

Conclusions:

• The proposed multi-point fault injection method offers a substantial acceleration effect for SEE simulations.
• This technique effectively overcomes the inefficiency and ambiguity issues of previous fault injection strategies.
• The improved method enhances the reliability analysis of aerospace integrated circuits by increasing simulation efficiency.