Space industry is changing very fast since the last few years. With the explosion of the information society a lot of new players have come into the space market. Thanks to them, customers are demanding better specifications and lower prices. This situation is pushing most of the companies to explore new ways of making satellites. When it comes to components, traditional rad-hard parts are progressively been replaced by commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ones in a lot of applications. In order to have an excellent time performance in the Single Event Latch up (SEL) tests, a lowcost and high-flexibility testing unit has been developed by Thales Alenia Space in Spain called CLARK (Control de Latch up Ajustable y Regulable para Kits de Evaluación).
The new CERN High energy AcceleRator Mixed Field facility (CHARM) allows to test several single components, as well as more complex devices, at different locations, characterized by particle spectra representative of the high- and low-altitude atmospheric, particle accelerator and ground environments.
As electronic devices saturate all corners of public and personal life, engineers are scrambling to find lightweight, mechanically stable, flexible, and easily manufactured materials that can shield humans from excessive electromagnetic radiation as well as prevent electronic devices from interfering with each other.
The satellite market is experiencing a paradigm shift with the photonics penetration in every part of the satellite payload. Although some advances have been done with the introduction of optical interconnects in a commercial digital processor of a satellite payload.
Commercial parts will have TID ranges between 3-30 krad(Si)and SEL and SEU ranges between 1-120 MeV. Of course, commercial parts are not designed with radiation performance in mind. Nevertheless, a few commercial ICs have in fact exhibited acceptable radiation hardened characteristics.
Focus in most significative features of irradiation testing according to different standards, is essential after determine if it is necessary to perform an irradiation test.
The RADECS Conference is the annual European scientific and industrial forum on the effects of radiation effects on electronic and photonic materials, devices, circuits, sensors and systems where scientists and engineers exchange on the latest progress and result about:
Radiation Environments
Radiation effects modeling, from materials to device, circuit and system level
Test facilities & dosimetry
Radiation hardness assurance
Hardening and mitigation solutions
Applications & case studies