immunity of fpga chips by direct injection
TRANSCRIPT
Background: York Minster roof, from http://www.photoeverywhere.co.uk
Immunity of FPGA Chips by Direct InjectionTobias Aurand, John F Dawson, Martin P Robinson, Andrew C Marvin, Department of Electronics, University of York, UK
Signalgenerator
Directional coupler
2 channelPower meter
IC under test mounted
on test PCB
FPGA
physical layout
P40 P59
FPGA
functional layout
1235 4
RF injection
6.8nF
P40 P59
From: Spartan-3L Low Power FPGA Family,Product Specification DS313, Xilinx, 2008
The experimental set-up for direct injection immunity tests.In some cases a power amplifier is inserted after the signal generator.
The direct injection circuit board for the Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA.
The FPGA has core logic blocks interfaced to the outside world via IO blocks
Due to space limitations we put test pads on alternate pins and had to skip over some ground and power pins. Initially interference was injected on to pin 59 only with the
terminations on nearby pins varied
Here you can see the Immunity of P59 with adjacent pins open
(internal pull-down).
With purely resistive loads the changes in immunity are much smaller
Comparing different capacitive and resistive loads on pad 2
The Immunity of P59 changes as a 100pF capacitive load is placed on nearby pins.The input impedance of P59 changes due to the load on adjacent pins
Background: York Minster roof, from http://www.photoeverywhere.co.uk
FPGA
physical layout
P59
P57
P5
5
P53
P5
1
2.5 V
Pads for 0603 SMD components
Tracks leading to SMD connectors for injection
Altera - FPGA
physical layout
P81
P79
P77
P75
P73
VC
CIO
P83
P85
P87
Sup
ply
GN
D
VC
CIN
T
Clo
ck in
put
From: Cyclone III low-cost FPGAs, Altera, 2007
Effect of pcb track and connector at pin 40 on pin 59. Power and ground pins
between seem to isolate any interaction.
The immunity levels of pins 40 and 59 are comparable but not exactly equal. The
measurement is repeatable
A capacitor on pad 4 has little effect on the pin 40 immunity. Ground and power pins between pin 40 and the capacitor
seem to provide isolation.
We built a test board with alternate pins grounded to see if the ground
connections would isolate interactions.
Investigating the coupling between pins shows strong coupling between pins, this
appears to be an on-chip effect.
We decided to look at another similar device to see if the same effects were observable.
The Altera Cyclone-3 family has a similar architecture to the Xilinx device
The Altera FPGA was connected with alternate pins grounded as with the 2nd
Xilinx design.
With the Altera FPGA we observed a larger pin-to-pin variation in immunity
The effect of termination of nearby pins on the immunity of pin 75 was found to be significant even with alternate pins
grounded
The effect of termination of nearby pins on the input impedance of pin 75 was
found to be significant even with alternate pins grounded
The effect of capacitive loads on nearby pins is reduced by grounding alternate pins.