In-circuit Error Detection with Software-based Error Correction – An Alternative to TMR

Abstract

FPGAs are often utilized in space avionics. To protect the FPGA application data against radiation effects in space, data redundancy can be used. A well-known method is to triplicate the circuit and eliminate the erroneous circuit output with a local voter (TMR). Alternatively, in-circuit error detection with software-based error correction can be used, if the FPGA works as a co-module next to a processor running the mission software. In this work, we present an implementation of this method on a commonly used spacecraft data handling architecture.

This work was supported by the Graduate School SyDe, funded by the German Excellence Initiative within the University of Bremen’s institutional strategy.