Fault tolerant design implementation on radiation hardened by design SRAM-Based FPGAs

Abstract

SRAM-based FPGAs are highly attractive for space applications due to their in-flight reconfigurability, decreased development time and cost, and increased design and testing flexibility. The Xilinx Virtex-5QV is the first commercially available Radiation Hardened By Design (RHBD) SRAM-based FPGA; however, not all of its internal components are hardened against radiation-induced errors. This thesis examines and quantifies the additional considerations and techniques designers should employ with a RHBD SRAM-based FPGA in a space-based processing system to achieve high operational reliability. Additionally, this work presents the application of some of these techniques to the embedded avionics design of the REXIS imaging payload on the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.