LIHL: Design of a Novel Loop Interlocked Hardened Latch

Abstract

A single event causing a double-node upset is likely to occur in nanometric complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). Contemporary hardened latch designs are insufficient in meeting high reliability, low power consumption, and low delay. This paper presents a novel soft error hardened latch, known as a loop interlocked hardened latch (LIHL). This latch consists of four modified cross-coupled elements, based on dual interlocked storage cell (DICE) latch. The use of these elements hardens the proposed LIHL to soft errors. The simulation results showed that the LIHL has single-event double upset (SEDU) self-recoverability and single-event transient (SET) pulse filterability. This latch also reduces power dissipation and propagation delay, compared to other SEDU or SET-tolerant latches.