Fault Characterization and Hardening of Combinational Standard Cells Using 3D-TCAD Simulations for Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are increasingly employed in applications with various levels of mission criticality, making the reliability of digital system components essential for maintaining service quality. On the other hand, advancements in technology nodes have heightened reliability concerns in these systems. This paper presents a method for characterizing and enhancing the fault tolerance of combinational standard cells using 3D-TCAD simulations. Through detailed simulations, we identify fault-sensitive regions in widely used standard cells under diverse scenarios that include variations in fault energy, particle angle, and the adjacency effect of identical and non-identical neighboring cells. Following this high-precision characterization, a hardened version of a universal logic NAND cell is proposed that mitigates its vulnerabilities. Simulation results demonstrate substantial improvements in resilience to particle-induced faults.