Analysis of COTS FPGA SEU-sensitivity to combined effects of conducted-EMI and TID

The desirable use of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FGPAs) in aerospace & defense field has become a general consensus among IC and embedded system designers. Radiation-hardened (rad-hard) electronics used in this domain is regulated under severe and complex political and commercial treaties. In order to refrain from these undesired political and commercial barriers component-off-the-shelf (COTS) FPGAs (despite the fact of their low reliability) have been considered as a promising alternative to replace rad-hard ICs. In this scenario, this paper analyses the Single-Event Upset (SEU) sensitivity of the Microsemi ProASIC3E A3PE1500 COTS FPGA for a combined set of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and Total-Ionizing Dose (TID) tests. This component is under pre-qualification process for use in some satellites of the Brazilian Space Program. Experimental results are herein briefly presented and discussed. These results allow us to consider this component as a strong candidate to replace rad-hard FPGAs, if its use is combined with strict system-level fault-tolerant strategies for error detection and correction (EDAC).