A 13T Radiation-Hardened Memory Cell for Low-Voltage Operation and Ultralow Power Space Applications

Chunhua Qi, Liyi Xiao, Mingxue Huo, Tianqi Wang, Rongsheng Zhang, Xuebing Cao
harbin institute of technology


Abstract

This paper presents a novel memory cell design as variant of Lior Atias’ 13T cell (mentioned as LA13T cell in this paper) for low-voltage operation and ultralow power space applications. Using C-element as a replacement of dual-driven inverters in the LA13T cell, our proposed radiation hardened by design memory cell (referred to as RHD13T) can effectively block the unwanted paths from Vdd to Gnd during SEU occurrence, while the problem will occur on LA13T cell. Simulation results show that, at the expense of an increased area for obtaining the same drive capability as LA13T cell at each internal store node, RHD13T cell shows a better power consumption than LA13T cell in the hold operation, and a much better ability of tolerance to a single event upset when implemented in 65nm commercial technology.