Self-Healing Circuits for Space-Applications

In particular for applications where no repair is possible, e.g. space missions, high reliability is usually an important requirement. Long mission times and harsh environment are a challenge for electronic circuits, and particular error mitigation techniques have to be implemented in order to be able to cope with the expected error effects. Our approach instead is based on delay-insensitive asynchronous logic, more precisely on the four state logic (FSL) design style and partial reconfiguration. Compared to synchronous circuits, FSL implies a considerable area overhead, but also provides some hidden and usually unused features. In this paper an overview is presented, how these features can be utilized in order to implement self-healing circuits in a very efficient way. As the FSL design style plays a central role in the presented concept, first an introduction to FSL is provided. Subsequently the self-healing approach will be explained showing how the above mentioned tasks to achieve self-healing are realized. The paper concludes with the current implementation status and open problems.