A comparative study of heavy-ion and proton-induced bit-error sensitivity and complex burst-error modes in commercially available high-speed SiGe BiCMOS

We compare heavy ion and proton SEE data on commercial SiGe technologies from IBMs 7 HP and 5 AM processes and Jazz Semiconductors SiGe120 process at data rates from 50 Mb/s to 12.4 Gb/s. Complex burst-error trends correlate with both data rate and particle LET, as well as pulsed laser probing of both data paths and clock distribution circuitry. Index Terms--Ground testing, high-speed testing, silicon germanium (SiGe), single-event effect (SEE), single-event upset (SEU).