Title: The design of bio-inspired ESD protection model for digital circuits based on cell structure

Authors: Menghua Man; Shanghe Liu; Yongsheng Gao; Liang Yuan; Zhengquan Ju

Addresses: The Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Protection Institute, Mechanical Engineering College, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050003, China. ' The Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Protection Institute, Mechanical Engineering College, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050003, China. ' The Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Protection Institute, Mechanical Engineering College, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050003, China. ' Department of Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering College, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050003, China. ' The Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Protection Institute, Mechanical Engineering College, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050003, China

Abstract: As the semiconductor feature size decreases and the number of transistors on a single chip increases, digital circuits are frequently used in harsh and complex electromagnetic interference (EMI) environments. Typical protection problems are gradually prominent, such as malfunctions, performance degradation and destructions in component and/or system. This paper proposed a bio-inspired model to fulfil the requirements of digital circuits' protection performance. Firstly, extensive experiments have been carried out and are presented here to simulate the process of field program gate array (FPGA) chips damaged by human body model (HBM) electrostatic discharge (ESD), applying the contact discharge method. And then, this paper builds the functional fault model of the above process and verifies the similarity in the aftermath of damaging electrical and biological systems. Thus for electronic system design, we proposed the virtual cell model with redundancy structure, self-organising and self-healing operational methodology which is built upon artificial evolution. Finally, we implemented Markov model to analyse the steady-state stability of the virtual cell model in order to prove its durability when it comes to heavy and frequent ESD damage.

Keywords: digital circuits; bio-inspired computation; modelling; reliability; Markov model; cell structure; electromagnetic interference; EMI; circuit protection; field programmable gate arrays; FPGA chips; human body model; HBM; electrostatic discharge; ESD; contact discharge; virtual cell models; redundancy; self-organising; self-healing; artificial evolution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2012.047735

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2012 Vol.16 No.3, pp.251 - 258

Published online: 17 Dec 2014 *

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