Single event transient effects on charge redistribution SAR ADCs

This work presents a study on the effects of Single Event Transients on Successive Approximation Register Analog-To-Digital Converters (ADC) based on charge redistribution. The effects of SETs are analyzed by means of an extensive fault injection campaign by using a SPICE simulator and a predictive 130nm CMOS technology model. Faults are injected in the analog blocks and in the digital control circuit of the converter. Results show that the transient effects may change the state of one or more bits of conversion, since the affected conversion stage may propagate an incorrect value to the remainder of the conversion, leading to multiple bit errors on the converted data. Results also allow to identify the most sensitive nodes and the failure mechanisms associated to transient effects on this type of converter. Finally, some design-level mitigation strategies are applied, in a way that the error rate and the magnitude of conversion errors are significantly reduced.