A method of space radiation environment reliability prediction

Abstract

Advanced semiconductors below 180nm in Satellites are all operating in the natural space radiation environment, and are very sensitive to space radiation stresses [1]. Some are very sensitive to single event effects (SEE) [2], some are more sensitive to total ionizing dose (TID) or displacement damages (DD)[3] [4]. Outages due to SEE, TID, or DD are common for satellites [5] [6]. Therefore, for mission success, the space radiation environment reliability due to SEE, TID or DD should be analyzed for these systems. This paper defines the concept of space radiation environment reliability for satellites and establishes a model of space radiation environment reliability prediction, which establishes the relationship among system failure rate and space radiation environment failure rate and non space radiation environment failure rate. This is also a general model and may be applied to airplanes and ground network computers operating in the natural radiation environment. This paper provides the method of space radiation environment reliability prediction creative on 3 aspects: (1) Incorporating the space radiation environment reliability into traditional reliability prediction methods, such as FIDES and MIL-HDBK-217. (2) Summing up the total space radiation environment reliability failure rate by sum up the total hard failure rate and soft failure rate of the independent failure rates of SEE, TID and DD. (3) Transferring TID/DD effects into equivalent failure rate and considering SEE effects by failure mechanism in the operational conditions of duty hours within calendar year. A prediction application case study has been illustrated for a small payload. The models and methods of space radiation environment reliability prediction are used with ground test data of TID, SEE for FPGA.