A radiation-hardened delay-locked loop (DLL) utilizing a differential delay line topology

A radiation-hardened-by-design DLL is proposed. The proposed DLL uses a radiation hardened voltage-controlled delay line and charge pump, resulting in the mitigation of all missing pulses and inverted lock errors in the SET response. The RHBD DLL was designed in IBM 90nm and 180 nm PDK, we also observe the same simulations result for node technologies using two different type of current injection to simulate the SET response of the DLLs designs. The RHBD DLL has been proven to be hard up to 80 MeV-cm²/mg at max operating frequency of 1GHz for the 90 nm PDK and 100 MeV-cm²/mg at operating frequency of 500 MHz for the 180nm PDK. This RHBD DLL also offers low power consumption and area penalty when compared to the hardening technique such as TMR.