Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

The Characterization Of A Cmos Radiation Hardened-By-Design Circuit Technique, Austin James Womac

Masters Theses

This thesis presents the analysis, implementation and testing of a circuit-level radiation hardened-by-design (RHBD) technique first presented in [1]. Radiation effects heavily influence the cost and design of electronics bound for radiation-rich environments such as in nuclear reactors or space. The circuit-level RHBD technique is presented as a cost-effective way to mitigate total-ionizing dose (TID) radiation in digital complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistor circuits. These claims are analyzed and experimentally tested.

Devices from a relatively old and a newer semiconductor fabrication process are tested to investigate the impact of device scaling on the RHBD technique’s effectiveness. A rad-tolerant frequency synthesizer that …