Algorithm of SEU Rate Prediction Inside Spacecrafts

Abstract

One of the important effects of the space environment on the satellites and spacecrafts is the single event upsets (SEUs) which are caused by the high energy particles in space. A SEU occurs when an ionizing radiation produces a burst of electron-hole pairs in a digital microelectronic circuit and causes the charge state to change. We have developed and integrated a software package which can estimate the SEU rates for any specified locations or altitudes under various geophysical conditions. We report in this paper the algorithm of the software and the results for some devices with known parameters. We also compare the results with actual observations made by Akebono.