Comparison of the Total Ionizing Dose Sensitivity of a System in Package Point of Load Converter Using Both Component- and System-Level Test Approaches

Tomasz Rajkowski,Patrick Dubus,Antoine Touboul,Pierre Kohler,Tadec Maraine,Kimmo Niskanen,Pierre-Xiao Wang,Frédéric Saigné,Jérôme Boch

doi:10.3390/electronics10111235

Tomasz Rajkowski, Patrick Dubus + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10111235

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Abstract

Testing at system level is evaluated by measuring the sensitivity of point-of-load (PoL) converter parameters, submitted to total ionizing dose (TID) irradiations, at both system and component levels. Testing at system level shows that the complete system can be fully functional at the TID level more than two times higher than the qualification level obtained using a standard-based component-level approach. Analysis of the failure processes shows that the TID tolerance during testing at system level is increased due to internal compensation in the system. Finally, advantages and shortcomings of the testing at system level are discussed.

Highlights

The qualification of components that will be used for space missions requires test standards that allow the selection of components that will make up the on-board systems [1,2,3]
With the increasing use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices or the need to set up selection methodologies for new fields, such as nuclear decommissioning or NewSpace, the question of testing no longer at the component level but at the level of a system arises [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]
The test setup is usually simpler for total ionizing dose (TID) testing because generally there is no need to monitor the performance of the system under test (SUT) during irradiation; characterization might be performed when irradiation is stopped and the SUT removed from the test area, sometimes it is chosen to perform in situ or even in-flux measurements with automated test equipment [6,7]

Summary

Introduction

The qualification of components that will be used for space missions requires test standards that allow the selection of components that will make up the on-board systems [1,2,3]. It is expected that testing at system level may lead to the reduction of the test effort when compared to testing at the component level of all the parts constituting the system—it may reduce time-to-market for new products. Currently there is no standard that would describe the qualification process of electronics through radiation testing at system level and this paper aims to evaluate some of the capabilities of this approach. They are typically easier and cheaper to perform than single event effect (SEE) system-level tests, due to relatively high accessibility of the standard test source, the Co60 isotope that emits highly penetrating gamma rays, which can penetrate whole electronic boards and systems. Because the SUT has both CMOS and bipolar parts, low dose rate irradiation is used as the worst case for this scenario

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