航天应用FPGA配置可靠性研究

Research on the Reliability of FPGA Configuration in Space-based Systems

航天应用系统必须保证每一单元的安全性及可靠性.现场可编程门阵列(Field Programmable Gate Array,FPGA),以其I/O管脚丰富、设计灵活等优势,逐渐被广泛应用于航天领域.其设计与工艺不断完善,以适应太空中电子辐射等复杂的工作环境.由于基于SRAM的FPGA芯片断电后程序丢失,因此每次上电后都需要先从PROM等外部存储器中加载程序才能正常工作.然而,并不是每一个芯片的每一次加载配置都能成功完成,FPGA的上电配置结果将直接关系到卫星任务的成败.研究发现,诸如环境温度、信号完整性、供电电压、配置时钟速率等因素会影响FPGA的配置过程,致使出现偶尔的配置失败,这在航天应用中是绝对不允许的.针对实际应用的Xilinx公司FPGA芯片,为提高上电配置可靠性,提出了一系列设计保障措施,在FPGA航天应用领域具有一定的参考价值.

Designers of space-based systems face unique challenges to insure each unit against failure.FPGA are used gradually in the aerospace field since it is invented with abundant I/O pins and flexible design margin.Many manufactures have been improving those space-qualified FPGA devices to adapt the aerospace high-radiation environments.FPGA devices based on SRAMs have to load configuration data from external PROMs on power-up before the logic is activated.However, not each batch or each device can be configured successfully with zero-failure.This paper explores every possible factor such as environment temperature,signal integrality,configuration rate and so on.Aiming at Xilinx FPGA devices,this paper provides a series of safeguard solutions for higher reliability of configuration.It has significant reference value in aerospace application fields for its feasibility and reliability.