Neutron-induced single event effect in mixed-signal flash-based FPGA

This chapter describes a neutron-induced Single Event Effect test in a commercial Mixed-Signal Programmable System-on-Chip FPGA from Microsemi. The main objective is to investigate the digital and analog parts reliability for critical application projects. The case-study circuit is a data acquisition system that uses analog blocks, buses and interfaces, embedded processor and programmable digital data processing. Two different architectures using design diversity redundancy were implemented, each one composed of specific redundant schemes. The setup was exposed to a neutron source at the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory-ISIS in order to investigate the occurrence of SEE ranging from single to bursts of errors. The results are important to characterize the device and to demonstrate the importance of using design diversity redundancy to improve the robustness of a system.