Quiescent current monitoring to improve the reliability of electronic systems in space radiation environments

This paper presents a study of the behavior of a built-in current sensor (BICS) to be used for online concurrent error detection in circuits working in radiation-exposed environments. BIC sensors are used to monitor the power-bus static current of these circuits to detect excessive current consumption. This excessive static current consumption is compared to a predefined reference value in order to detect radiation-induced multiple parametric failures and system power supply breakdown. BIC sensors can also be affected by these faults and the reliability of the system can be lost. However, we show that the proposed current sensor is strongly code disjoint (SCD) with respect to the above faults and the system reliability is guaranteed