Cosmic radiation effects on avionics
Section snippets
What are cosmic rays?
Cosmic rays were first discovered in 1912 in a Nobel prize-winning experiment when an Austrian called Hess flew a detector on a balloon and showed that ionisation increased with altitude. Many years of research and the ability to get above the atmosphere afforded by the space programme show that the earth's magnetosphere is bombarded by a nearly isotropic flux of energetic charged particles, primarily the nuclei of atoms stripped of all electrons. These comprise 85% protons (hydrogen nuclei),
Direct ionisation
The primary particles are very energetic and are highly ionising which means that they strip electrons from atoms which lie in their path and hence generate charge. The density of charge deposition is proportional to the square of the atomic number of the cosmic ray so that the heavier species can deposit enough charge in a small volume of silicon to change the state of a memory cell, a one becoming a zero and vice versa. Thus memories can become corrupted and this could lead to erroneous
What is the experience of the space industry?
There is a strong body of evidence from the space business of errors, computer crashes and even hardware failure resulting from radiation. Such phenomena were first predicted in 1962 but computer technology did not become sensitive until 1975, since when increasing numbers of anomalies have been logged. Papers on such phenomena have formed an ever increasing part of the IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference held every year in July with refereed papers published in the IEEE
Environment measurements
A version of the CREAM detector made regular flights on board Concorde G-BOAB between November 1988 and December 1992. Results from 512 flights have been analysed of which 412 follow high latitude trans-Atlantic routes between London and either New York or Washington DC [7]. Thus some 1000 h of observations have been made at altitudes in excess of 50 000 feet and at a low cut-off rigidity of less than 2 GV (cut-off rigidity is the momentum-to-charge ratio of a particle which can just penetrate
What can we do about it?
For future systems, there is likely to be increasing reliance on faster, `better' computers and large solid-state memories using smaller devices operated at lower voltages. This trend is likely to be accompanied by the use of higher flight altitudes so that SEEs are likely to become increasingly significant. The influence of cosmic rays will have to be properly considered in the assessment of reliability and cost-effective mitigating strategies adopted.
In considering hardening possibilities, it
Clive Dyer obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Natural Sciences from Christ's College Cambridge in 1969 and a PhD in Physics from Imperial College London in 1973. He worked as a Research Associate at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland USA for 4 years where he was involved in analysis of data from the Apollo and Apollo–Soyuz missions. Following this, he joined the Ministry of Defence as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nuclear Science at the Royal Naval
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Clive Dyer obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Natural Sciences from Christ's College Cambridge in 1969 and a PhD in Physics from Imperial College London in 1973. He worked as a Research Associate at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland USA for 4 years where he was involved in analysis of data from the Apollo and Apollo–Soyuz missions. Following this, he joined the Ministry of Defence as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nuclear Science at the Royal Naval College Greenwich. In 1980, he transferred to the Space Department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough, which now forms part of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. For the past 12 years he has been leading a research programme in Spacecraft Environment and Protection, which includes radiation effects experiments carried on a range of platforms including aircraft, Space Shuttle and several spacecraft extending to geostationary altitudes. In 1993, he was awarded the Geoffrey Pardoe Space Award of the Royal Aeronautical Society for his work on the definition of the space environment and its effects on space systems. He is currently a senior DERA fellow and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Centre for Satellite Engineering Research of the University of Surrey.
Peter Truscott obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Physics from the University of Bristol in 1985 following which he joined the Spacecraft Environment and Protection team at RAE Farnborough (now DERA). He has been actively involved in space experiments and radiation transport simulation and has obtained a PhD as an external student at Imperial College London. He has recently been appointed as Principal Scientist in charge of Space Threat Definition.