Radiation-Induced Failures for Integrated Circuits in Space and Design Philosophy

As an increasing number of Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) integrated circuits are employed in space missions, radiation-induced failures become an obvious risk to these missions. Various radiation effects on COTS in space applications are reviewed and discussed. Among various radiation effects, Single Event Latchup (SEL) and Single Event Upset (SEU) are the two most critical effects severely impacting power reliability and data integrity of COTS, respectively. To protect COTS in space missions against these radiation-induced failures, a design philosophy is proposed in this paper, with the aim of fundamentally ascertaining power reliability and data integrity. The design philosophy embodies two radiation hardened products, LDAP (Latchup Detection And Protection) and Voter, which are invented and produced by Zero-Error Systems. Specifically, LDAP serves to intelligently detect the occurrence of SEL and rapidly mitigate it by power cycling, hence enhancing power reliability. Voter, on the other hand, serves as the last checkpoint of a Triple Modular Redundancy system and mitigates SEU by always outputting the correct data, hence improving data integrity. The proposed design philosophy embodying LDAP and Voter collectively and significantly enhances COTS’ reliability, desirably allowing satellite manufacturers to select and employ COTS freely.