Radiation hardness assurance through system-level testing : risk acceptance, facility requirements, test methodology and data exploitation

Functional verification schemes at a level different than component-level testing are emerging as a cost-effective tool for those space systems for which the risk associated with a lower level of assurance can be accepted. Despite the promising potential, system-level radiation testing can be applied to the functional verification of systems under restricting intrinsic boundaries. Most of them are related to the use of hadrons as opposed to heavy ions. Hadrons are preferred for the irradiation of any bulky system in general because of their deeper penetration capabilities. General guidelines about the test preparation and procedure for a high-level radiation test are provided to allow understanding which information can be extracted from these kinds of functional verification schemes in order to compare them with the reliability and availability requirements. The use of a general scaling factor for the observed high-level cross-sections allows converting test cross-sections into orbit rates.