A Novel Embryonic Cellular Architecture with BIST for Deep Space Systems

In deep space systems, it is necessary to design reconfigurable system with fault tolerance. The delay in communication and the unpredictable failures can be detrimental to the space systems. The emerging field of embryonics, inspired from biological processes, provides in-built self-repair features. The embryonic circuit growth and its operation are decided by the stored genome configuration data. The embryonic cellular structure has in-built fault tolerance due to its structure. Each cell contains the total genome data of fabric, so that in case of any one cell failure, the data can be copied to spare cell. The fault detection technique at cell level has been explored in this chapter. The novel embryonic architecture with BIST that is proposed in this chapter is evolved from the concept of cloning used by biological cell to grow into a bigger system. The embryonic architecture is integrated with self-test and self-repair functions. In case the fault detection is possible at cell level, the faulty cell isolation is easy to implement. A novel embryonic fabric architecture with built-in self-test is presented. The design is coded using verilog and simulated for 1-bit adder and 2-bit comparator cell design. The genome data are generated through evolutionary algorithm and decoded as Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP).