A Single-Event Transient Radiation Hardened Low-Dropout Regulator for LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

Xi Chen; Qiancheng Guo; Hengzhou Yuan; Yang Guo

doi:10.3390/sym14040788

Symmetry (Apr 2022)

A Single-Event Transient Radiation Hardened Low-Dropout Regulator for LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

Xi Chen,
Qiancheng Guo,
Hengzhou Yuan,
Yang Guo

Affiliations

Xi Chen: College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Qiancheng Guo: College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Hengzhou Yuan: College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
Yang Guo: College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14040788
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 14, no. 4
p. 788

Abstract

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A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is an essential part of the clock circuitry in satellite communication systems. Low-dropout regulators (LDO) provide stable voltage supply to the VCO and inevitably bring in new radiation-sensitive nodes. In this paper, by conducting single-event transient (SET) sensitivity analysis of LDO in voltage-regulated VCO, we find the sensitive nodes of LDO in oscillation circuits located on the relevant transistors that determine the bias voltage of the tail transistor in the error amplifier (EA). To immunize SET, a symmetrical hardening method combining sensitive node splitting and resistive-decoupling is proposed for the sensitive nodes. This method achieves 80.8% analog single-event transient (ASET) mitigation. This study was conducted in 28-nm CMOS process.

Published in Symmetry

ISSN: 2073-8994 (Online)
Publisher: MDPI AG
Country of publisher: Switzerland
LCC subjects: Science: Mathematics
Website: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/symmetry/

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