An experimental analysis of SEU sensitiveness of recursive-oriented hardening techniques

Logic Soft Errors caused by radiation are a major concern when working with circuits that need to operate in harsh environments, such as space or avionics applications, where soft errors are traditionally referred as Single Event Effects. In this paper, recursive techniques for the implementation of moving average filters that provide protection against Single Event Upsets are evaluated through two fault injection systems based on simulation and emulation respectively. Fault injection campaigns show that recursive techniques can achieve the same level of dependability that standard redundancy techniques, such as Triple Modular Redundancy, offer while having optimal cost. Detailed experimental analyses show that emulation based fault injection has a speed-up of two order of magnitude versus simulation-based approach.