Implementation of a Fault Tolerant Control Unit within an FPGA for Space Applications

Abstract

The space environment implies a challenge for the development and utilization of electronics. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) represent a possible solution to that challenge. An FPGA itself is not a Fault Tolerant component, but with the correct configuration it can emulate and behave as one. The Configurable Fault Tolerant Processor (CFTP) developed at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) was intended to work as a platform for the implementation and testing of designs and experiments for space applications. The mayor components of the CFTP are two FPGAs, one configured as the control FPGA (X1) and the other as the experiment FPGA (X2). The configuration of the experiment FPGA already includes fault tolerant properties against radiation and its effects over FPGAs. The control experiment did not have any fault tolerance built-in. This thesis investigates the design, considerations, implementation, performance and resource utilization of a Fault Tolerant Control Unit based on FPGA technology using a Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) approach.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA462520

Entities

People

  • Gaspar M. Perez Casanova

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application-Specific Integrated Circuits
  • Charged Particles
  • Computer Programming
  • Cosmic Rays
  • Electronic Components
  • Electronics
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Ionizing Radiation
  • Radiation
  • Radiation Effects
  • Semiconductor Devices
  • Semiconductors
  • Space Systems
  • Very Large Scale Integration

Readers

  • Fault Tolerant Diagnosis of Black and White Balloon Isolation Tests Using ¥.
  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.
  • Robotics and Automation.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Space
  • Space - Satellites