Programmable SEL Test Monitoring System for Radiation Hardness Assurance

In the continued miniaturization of electronic devices, certain advantages in terms of power consumption, performances, and physical area occupation correspond to an increased susceptibility to highly charged radiation particle interactions. Therefore, it is nowadays extremely important to assess Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) procedures in order to guarantee that a certain system is suitable to be used in extreme environmental conditions such as deep space. When performing these measurements, the design and development of dedicated fault monitoring systems to be used as support architecture during the radiation tests are heavily time and budget-consuming operations. The present paper describes a programmable Single Event Latch-up (SEL) monitoring system capable of supporting experimenters on the test of several heterogeneous electronic devices ranging from microcontrollers up to individual MOSFETs. The proposed solution has been successfully verified during a heavy-ion radiation test campaign. The experimental results achieved during the radiation test campaigns are described and commented.