A radiation hardened by design embedded microprocessor is presented. The design uses multiple approaches to minimize the performance reduction from hardening, while simultaneously limiting the power increase. The speculative portions of the pipeline are protected by microarchitecture approaches, i.e., the speculative pipeline is dual redundant, whereby instructions that have errors in one copy cause a pipeline restart - only matching results commit to architectural state. The register file is dual redundant with mechanisms for correction using one copy whose parity is correct. The data cache memory is write-through, allowing protection with parity. The remaining architectural state is protected via hardened circuits. These are implemented with self-correcting triple mode redundant (TMR) flip-flops and TMR logic. The design, implemented here on a 90-nm bulk CMOS process, achieves unprecedented single event effects hardness and 400+ MHz operating frequency at less than 500 mW power consumption. The main constituent circuit hardening approaches have been fabricated and tested separately. Broad beam testing of the constituent circuits has resulted in no uncorrectable soft errors below 100 MeV-cm2/mg LETEFF. We describe the CAD flows used to ensure node separation to achieve high immunity to multiple node charge collection and discuss the relative costs of the chosen hardening techniques.

The precollege program in the NSF-supported Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center is in its third year with over 100 participants in the first two years at three university campuses. The precollege programs consist of (1) a Research Experience for Teachers, (2) a Young Scholars commuter program for high school students, and (3) summer science camps for middle school students. An Each One Mentor One approach is implemented which links mentorship between faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, teachers, and high school and middle school students. Program assessment results show that teachers now have an increased interest in research on how math and science can be applied, and the teachers feel more confident in talking to their students about future careers in the field of engineering. The precollege program has motivated both the high school and middle school students to study harder, and while high school students are more confident they will enroll in an engineering degree program, they are not as confident that they will complete an engineering degree.

A ring oscillator based test structure with special power multiplexing to allow accurate active and standby (leakage) power measurements with minimal test chip pin count is presented. This structure is used to validate radiation hardened by design (RHBD) standard cell library gates for TID hardness and delay. Additionally, the performance of standard commercial two-edge gates and their annular counterparts are also compared experimentally. The gate delay and energy per transition is shown to be significantly increased for some RHBD gates over their two-edge counterparts. Large ring oscillator delay variations are also shown, even with all test die from the same wafer.

This paper analyzes the use of wide-area measurement technologies including satellite-based methods for the command and control of power systems. The methods studied include the global positioning system (GPS) and low earth orbit satellites (LEOS). Satellite technologies have been used in a variety of applications requiring precise timing between geographically diverse locations. The deregulation of the electric power industry is placing increased demands on power transmission system utilization. Because deregulated power systems utilize long-distance high-power exchanges, satellite-based communication systems are useful in control of geographically large interconnected power systems. In this paper, the satellite-based measurements and commands are introduced for wide-area control. With the support of wide-area signals, a multiagent supervisory-level power system stabilizer is proposed here as a potential wide-area control structure. Increased loading of transmission facilities is an impetus for accurate dynamic thermal overhead electrical conductor ratings. The application of satellite-based measurement for improving the dynamic thermal rating of overhead transmission circuits is suggested.