Experimental Study on Electromagnetic Pulse Sensitivity for Power Modules of FPGAs

In this paper, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensitivity of power modules of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is studied experimentally. Two FPGAs with different manufacturing processes are adopted. The pulse current injection (PCI) is, respectively, conducted on four independent power lines of FPGA test boards, and a specialized test program is designed to explore the influences of resource types and frequencies. The experimental results indicate that different power modules have significantly distinct failure characteristics and thresholds. For each power module, high-frequency (HF) signals generally exhibit greater sensitivity than constant signals in most cases, with frequency being a critical influencing factor. In addition, the EMP sensitivity of the VCCAUX can also be affected by resource types and location constraints. All power modules exhibit different sensitivities to PCIs of different polarities, with the negative injection showing more complex failure characteristics. The manufacturing processes of FPGAs have a slight impact on the EMP sensitivity of their power modules, which is only reflected on the VCCINT. In the case of enabled programmable read-only memory (PROM), an FPGA automatic reconfiguration process has been observed during the PCI experiment for the first time. Moreover, high-value capacitors on the power distribution network (PDN) provide effective filtering by reducing the amplitude and slowing down the edge of the pulsed current.