RADIATION EFFECTS ON SPACE

ELECTRONICS AND MITIGATION

TECHNIQUES
Outline
• Space radiation
• Radiation effects on electronics
• mitigation techniques
• Rad-hard by process
• Rad-hard by design
Space Radiation
• Solar radiation
• Cosmic rays
• Particles in radiation belt
Radiation Effects on Electronics
• Total ionizing dose(TID)
Caused due to long exposure to ionizing radiation.
• Single event effects(SEE)
Caused due to ionizing dose deposition from a high energy particles.
• Displacement Damage (DD)
• Caused by high energy radiation
Total Ionizing Dose (TID)
• Mainly caused by the energy particles in radiation belt.
• If MOS device is exposed to heavy radiation, charges create in the
gate insulation layer(gate oxide).
• The created charge is able to keep the device either in open or closed
state permanently leads to device failure.
• Threshold shift, leakage current and timing changes are some of the
problems.
Displacement Damage(DD)
• Mainly caused because of energy particle neutrons, protons or heavy
ions.
• When device exposed to radiation, it can displace the atoms from
their lattice position.
• Reduced gain, switching speed, structural damage and reliability are
some of the problems in DD
Single Event Effects
• Mainly caused due to heavy ions and high energy protons.
• When a single high-energy charged particle deposits a sufficient
amount of energy it results in either soft or hard errors.
• Soft errors include
• single event transients (SET)
• single event upset (SEU)
• single event functional interrupt (SEFI)
• Hard error or irreversible include
• Single event latchup (SEL)
Soft Errors
• Single event transients (SET)
Temporary voltage spikes or glitches that occur in electronic
circuits when a charged particle, such as a proton or heavy ion, strikes the
regions of devices.
• Single event upset (SEU)
when the charged particles strikes the sensitive node of memory
cell resulting in a bit flip or altering memory state.
• Single event functional interrupt (SEFI)
when the charged particles effect or upset control circuit
(generally state machines), placing the device into an undefined state,
which require a reset or a power cycle to recover.
 Hard Error
• Single event latchup (SEL)
• SEL can occur in any chip with a parasitic PNPN
structure.
• A heavy ion or a high-energy proton passing
through one of the two inner-transistor junctions
can turn on the thyristor-like structure, which then
stays "shorted" (an effect known as latch-up) until
the device is power-cycled.
• Device may fail due to high currents.
Challenges in-space computing
• In space environment we required special components can withstand
the radiations, temperature and resource constraint.
• Normal computing devices may not withstand by radiations levels in
space, so require a radiation hardened device.
• Space mission operates with limited power, which requires edge
computing boards to be power efficient.
• Edge computing, which process data locally gaining importance for
space applications due to bandwidth and less latency, enhancing the
efficiency.
Radiation Mitigation
• Radiation directly effects the reliability and performance of
computing electronics
• System malfunction, data corruption sometimes system failures
caused by radiation induced errors.
• Mitigation techniques are important to counter the radiation induced
errors to ensure the reliability and longevity of the electronics in
space radiations.
Mitigation Techniques
• Radiation-hardened by process
• Radiation-hardened by design
• Redundancy
• Error detection and correction
• Latchup protection circuit
• Shielding and packaging techniques
Rad hard by process
• Using specialized fabrication to produce radiation tolerant
components.
• To use the radiation resistant materials as substrates, oxide layers and
modifying process parameters.
• An insulating layer is used under the channels.
Rad hard by design
• The radiation mitigation techniques are applied in design such as
circuit layout i.e.,
• Enclosing transistor layout
• Guard rings around NMOS AND PMOS
• Thin gate oxides to reduce probability of holding charge
• By architectural(error correction for to radiation induce faults)
• Triple module redundancy
• Error correction code
Triple module redundancy
• Name indicates we have to triple each circuit.
• A majority voter circuit is used for the output
• Advantages
address faults in real time.
• Disadvantages
Increase the area by 3x.
Voter circuit have to be triple to avoid failure.
Error correction code
• Different type of error correction can be used such as
• Parity
• Cyclic redundancy check(CRC)
• Hamming codes
• Reed-Solomon codes
• CRC can implemented as a part of memory
Importance of energy efficiency in space
• Resource constraints
Limited power resources (only solar panels and batteries) which makes the
necessary for careful energy management.
• Mission durability
space missions face challenges related to energy availability and consumption.
Energy efficient technologies plays important role in prolong the mission
duration.
• Cost reduction
Energy efficient technologies contributes y minimizing the need for large power
supplies.
Deep learning in space applications
Techniques for reducing energy consumption
conclusion
• Radiation is a process in which energetic particles travels through
medium or space.
• Have seen types of space radiations and effects.
• Challenges in space computing
• Mitigation techniques through by process and by design
• In rad hard by design we have several codes for error correction
induced by SEE effects