Isabel Lopez-Calle

• Professor (Full) at Universidad de Cádiz

This paper presents an analysis of the SEE in-flight data of SRAMs on board Proba-II spacecraft. Proba-II spacecraft has been flying on a LEO orbit for more than 3 years. Observed in-flight error rates are compared with predictions based on ground test data.

A new LASER source for SEE test at the University Complutense of Madrid is presented to the scientific community. Due to the limitations of the SPA technique, this new facility use the TPA technique since it allows, normally, the carrier injection at any controlled depth in the material using backside irradiations.

Experiments to obtain XY scans on the surface of an amplifier at different depths and energy values were performed at the UCM, the results of which are shown and discussed in this paper.

The Sensors and Electronic Instrumentation Group of the University Complutense of Madrid has developed a system to emulate the cosmic radiations effects on electronic devices by LASER irradiations. Of great interest to the nuclear industry and space electronics, this project was carried out partially supported by the company ALTER SPAIN S.A., speci...

This paper is aimed at emulating the errors in semiconductor memories by space radiation with a pulsed laser that acts as an ion. A sensitivity map of the memory is performed identifying potential error areas and how many errors simultaneously occur.

This article presents an alternative approach to detecting and mapping space debris in low Earth orbit by utilizing commercially available automotive LiDAR sensors mounted on CubeSats. The main objective is to leverage the compact size, low weight, and minimal power consumption of these sensors to create a “Large Cosmic LiDAR” (LCL) system. This LC...

Occurrence level comparison of catastrophic failures due to radiation effects on electronic components or collision with space debris are studied in two types of satellites: cubesats and microsats. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) case studies are proposed, and the level of catastrophic failure occurrence is quantified for the same mission duration. The varia...

Shunt linear voltage regulators are still used in situations where other kinds of regulators are not advised. This paper explores a mechanism liable to induce long duration pulses (~100μs) in these devices, which is eventually demonstrated using a pulsed laser facility. Data issued from these tests helps to understand how the electrical network par...

The peak detector effect is a phenomenon that makes single event transients much longer once an error amplifier switches from linear to saturation zone due to the presence of external capacitors. This is so-called since it was discovered in a simple voltage reference in which a parasitic lossy peak detector was unwillingly built in the output stage...

Unlike for memory elements inside integrated circuits, scarce life tests have been performed to study single event transients in discrete analog devices. The reason is that life tests require a large amount of samples to be stored for having enough data allowing statistical conclusions and, usually, single event transients are captured by means of...

Within the framework of experimental field on technologies developments for research reactors applications, an experimental program dedicated to electronics behaviour under flux has been performed on wireless (WIFI) modules. The interest of using the WIFI modules in an industrial facility is to limit and some cases to work without transmission line...

Laser tests on a power operational amplifier were performed to investigate its sensitivity to single event transients. These tests apparently point out to this device being quite insensitive to single event transients so it would become a good candidate to develop power systems to be used in radiation environments.

Radiation induced soft errors are a major issue in modern digital circuits. Traditional mitigation techniques like Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) incur a large area and power overhead. This has motivated the design of ad-hoc mitigation techniques for some commonly used circuits. Among those, signal processing circuits have been widely studied. One...

One of the main phenomena that commit the reliability of analog electronic systems working in the outer space is the presence of energetic ions that produce spurious transients after crossing the device. These pulses are transmitted to the network loading the device and can eventually lead to dangerous situations as it has been observed in some spa...

Pulsed laser illumination constitutes an excellent tool to emulate the effects produced by the impact of highly energetic particles on electronic circuits. Numerical simulation techniques could be used to study these effects and to establish accurate relationships between the laser parameters and the particle characteristics. Unfortunately, althoug...

The influence of a load resistor on the shape of the single event transients was investigated in the LM124 operational amplifier by means of laser tests. These experiments indicated that, as a general rule, load resistors modify the size of the transients. SPICE simulations helped to understand the reasons of this behavior and showed that the disto...

The model presented allows the emulation of the space radiation environment that seriously affects the reliable operation of the electronic devices by means of a pulsed laser. The irradiation with a pulsed laser reproduces the voltage variation that occurs in an electronic device subsequent to the passage of an ionizing particle through it. The mod...

Single event effects (SEE) produced by highly energetic particle hits on sensitive circuit regions constitutes a main topic in reliability and device performance in space applications. Due to their high cost and limited availability, alternative methods to particle accelerator tests have been developed. In this sense, pulsed laser test have been sh...