Verification of Single Event Upset Rate Estimation Methods with On-Orbit Observations

Abstract

In an experiment aboard the Hughes Corporation Leasat vehicle at geosynchronous orbit, single event upsets (SEU) have been continuously monitored in a memory consisting of 93L422 RAMs. Using simultaneous measurements of the high energy galactic cosmic ray and solar flare particle environment from The University of Chicago experiment aboard the IMP-8 satellite, together with a Leasat mass distribution model and ground test measurements of the SEU susceptibility for the 93L422, accurate estimates of the SEU rate are calculated based on several improvements to the standard methods. These results are discussed and compared to the Leasat flight observations.