Impact of Ground-Level Enhancement (GLE) Solar Events on Soft Error Rate for Avionics

Abstract

This article proposes to study the impact of ground-level enhancement (GLE) induced by extreme solar flares on the soft error rate (SER) for flight representatives to the world-air traffic. A GLE physical model was confronted to cosmic ray variations measured with neutron monitors during the GLEs 5 and 69. Based on said GLE physical model and single-event upset occurrence models, investigations were performed to assess the SER during these GLEs for a bulk 90-nm commercial off-the-shelf SRAM. The main conclusion is that the GLE impact must be considered in the risk assessment, which requires a physical description of the additional solar cosmic rays and a realistic consideration of the air traffic.