Soft Errors Due to Protons in the Radiation Belt

This paper examines the problem of soft errors in semiconductor devices caused by the protons in the radiation belts. The errors can be produced by a variety of nuclear reactions in silicon. A previous paper presented a calculation of the likelihood of some of these reactions. This information can be combined with knowledge of the proton environment in order to estimate the upset rate for various devices in spacecraft. This paper discusses the proton environment, the effect of spacecraft shielding, the various proton induced reactions in silicon, the calculation of soft error sensitivity, and the soft error rate in a representative satellite.