A Novel Propagation Model of Single Event Effect Soft Error in FPGA Based on Cellular Automata

In complex space environments, semiconductor devices (such as FPGA) carried by spacecraft are easily affected by space particles, resulting in Single Event Effect (SEE) soft error. SEE soft error seriously threatens the working ability of semiconductor devices. In the statistical data of satellite faults launched abroad from 1971 to 1986, the number of soft error-related faults accounted for nearly 40% of the total number of space radiation faults. It is very important to study the propagation process of soft error to improve the reliability of semiconductor devices such as FPGA. At present, the main research methods for soft error propagation includes fault injection simulation method and probability calculation of soft error propagation prediction method. But they have high requirements on the detailed structure of the circuit, as well as time-consuming and inefficient. Cellular automata has the advantages of high efficiency and universality in fault propagation simulation. Therefore, this paper carried out research on the SEE soft error propagation model based on cellular automata. Taking typical FPGA as the research object, this research studied the fault propagation characteristics, which can obtain the SEE soft error propagation results intuitively and efficiently. This paper takes the propagation of soft error between configurable logic block (CLB) modules in FPGA as an example. Cellular automata models of different levels are established by top-down fault hierarchy analysis. The propagation results of soft error are obtained accordingly.