Design of finite-state-machine for space application based on FPGA inner RAM

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are widely used in modern satellites, are sensitive to space radiation. The single event upset (SEU) caused by high-energy space particles can disturb the function of the reconfigurable FPGA, and even lead to design failure. Hence, FPGA fault tolerant design technology must be developed to make up for the insufficiency in radiation resistance of its components. This article first analyzes the structure of a finite state machine (FSM), which serves to reveal the drawbacks of traditional fault tolerant design technology for FSM. Then, the article presents a new type of periodicity checkout FSM based on the inner dual port random access memory (RAM) of FPGA. Finally, a reliability analysis is performed and an experiment made of the proposed FSM. The results show that, compared with the traditional FSM, the FSM we designed has higher long term reliability, smaller FPGA resource requirement and lower power consumption in an outer space radiative environment.