An Enhanced Single-Event Charge Cancellation Technique for Sensitive Circuit Nodes

Abstract

An enhancement to an existing radiation hardening by design (RHBD) technique is proposed. The technique, Sensitive Node Active Charge Cancellation (SNACC), protects sensitive A/MS circuit nodes against single-event transients by leveraging inherent charge sharing effects to provide cancellation of deposited charge. By analyzing the charge sharing effects that drive the SNACC technique, a new technique, Enhanced SNACC (ESNACC), is derived that affords the same protection of sensitive nodes but with less sensitive area penalty. Single-event transient simulation results of a bias circuit hardened with ESNACC are presented to demonstrate the ESNACC concept.