Error rate estimation of a design implemented in an FPGA based on the operating conditions

This paper presents a framework to evaluate the error rate of a design implemented in an FPGA, depending on the operating conditions. The effects of the operating temperature as well as voltage variation are taken into account. For example, in applications such as the electric vehicle motor control, the non-negligible electromagnetic field can result in FPGA supply voltage variation. It is shown that successfully passing the standard static timing analysis for such an application is not always sufficient to ensure the reliability of the application. Thus, it is needed to assess the operation of the design in the real operating conditions, to ensure the correct execution of the application. The error rate results obtained by measurements show good correlation with the ones obtained from the proposed framework.