Design of a High-Performance Low-Cost Radiation-Hardened Phase-Locked Loop for Space Application

In the harsh space environment, the phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit is vulnerable to radiation effects, which will lead to performance degradation or even function interrupts. In this article, a rad-hard low-noise PLL is designed with low power and area overhead and verified in a 130-nm silicon-on-insulator process. Heavy ion test demonstrates that the proposed PLL is immune to the single-event effect up to 83.7 MeV·cm
²
/mg. Furthermore, its single-event sensitivity is characterized and compared with an unhardened PLL by the pulsed laser test. Finally, the gamma-ray radiation experiment confirms that it can provide >300 krad(Si) total ionizing dose assurance.