A CMOS OxRAM-Based Neuron Circuit Hardened with Enclosed Layout Transistors for Aerospace Applications

Brain-inspired computing architectures, brought by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), are an attractive solution to reduce the energy consumption of the conventional von Neumann's computation, with an excellent parallel processing capability. Therefore, critical applications, such as Space & Satellite, which impose severe constraints in terms of power consumption and computing efficiency, are excellent candidates to embed such networks. Nonetheless, integrated circuits operating during long-term and cumulative exposure to incidence levels of ionizing radiation may have their physical components degraded, thus drastically reducing their reliability and expected lifetime. A possible solution to enhance the radiation hardening characteristics of a conventional bulk CMOS device is to use the non-standard gate geometry referred to as Enclosed Layout Transistor (ELT). In this work, we propose to harden the design of an existing OxRAM-based neuron circuit [1] through the inclusion of ELTs, i.e., to improve the radiation hardening characteristics of a preexistent convenient neuron circuit topology by using the enclosed gate geometry for the n,pMOS devices. Electrical simulations, considering a standard commercial bulk CMOS fabrication process, in a 1SO nm technology, have been carried out to validate our proposed design. The simulation results, supported by the analysis of former works regarding the incidence of ionizing radiation in OxRAM and ELTs, indicate that the proposed hardened neuron circuit is a feasible solution to embed neuromorphic computing in aerospace applications.