Single event upset testing of commercial off-the-shelf electronics for launch vehicle applications

Development and evaluation of a flexible instrumentation layer for system-level testing of radiation effects

“…So far, there is no standard or common practices regarding system level data reporting, rather applicationspecific testing and reporting are done. In [3], for instance, a system level failure happens when the system generates an incorrect GPS output and non-critical or soft-error occurs when system crash or loss of positioning happens, whereas in [4], a system failure occurs when bugs are reported by a customized operational system or configuration bit upsets occur. This approach makes the component level information gathering more difficult and avoids the reusability of a system level test data.…”

“…This classical Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) process takes time and suffers from the significant costs associated to multiple test campaigns. Such process is hardly compatible with low-cost systems based on components-off-the-shelf (COTS) and limits the integration of new technologies [3][4] [5]. In addition, the application of the component level approach is considerably more complex on non-memory devices, such as Field-Programmable Gate-Array (FPGAs), System-on-Chip (SoC) and microprocessors, for which the radiation-induced failure rates can vary significantly according to the system's implementation and usage of the components, making reusability of the component-level results difficult [6].…”

“…Those reasons motivate the development of the systemlevel testing approach, in which a whole system is exposed to radiation and characterized at once. This approach is mostly used for non-critical missions [8], or small [3] and cube satellites [5] [7][8] [9]. In this work, we consider the particular case of a digital sub-system (typically a single board) including its application firmware and software.…”