Soft Errors: Reliability Challenges in Energy-Constrained ULP Body Sensor Networks Applications

摘要

Aggressive technology and supply voltage scaling has led to increasing concern for reliability. Optimizing power and energy with sub-threshold (sub-V_T) operation exponentially increases the occurrences of both static and dynamic failures. With smaller node capacitances with each technology and supply scaling node, radiation-induced Single Event Upset (SEU) has become a critical design metric for Ultra-Low-Power (ULP) applications. In this paper, we explore the impact of radiation-induced soft errors on sub-threshold SRAM implemented in a Body Sensory Node (BSN) as an ULP application. We also demonstrate an exponential reduction in the critical charge (Q_(Crlt)) of a storage node with supply in near- and sub-V_T design, resulting in a significant design consideration for the low-power applications. The huge process variation in sub-V_T results in 3X Qcrit variation. Finally, we compare the trend of technology scaling and supply voltage scaling on Q_(Crlt).