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Causal relationships between solar proton events and single event upsets for communication satellites

Author(s)
Lohmeyer, Whitney Quinne; Cahoy, Kerri; Liu, Shiyang
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
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Abstract
In this work, we analyze a historical archive of single event upsets (SEUs) maintained by Inmarsat, one of the world's leading providers of global mobile satellite communications services. Inmarsat has operated its geostationary communication satellites and collected extensive satellite anomaly and telemetry data since 1990. Over the course of the past twenty years, the satellites have experienced more than 226 single event upsets (SEUs), a catch-all term for anomalies that occur in a satellite's electronics such as bit-flips, trips in power supplies, and memory changes in attitude control systems. While SEUs are seemingly random and difficult to predict, we correlate their occurrences to space weather phenomena, and specifically show correlations between SEUs and solar proton events (SPEs). SPEs are highly energetic protons that originate from solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs). It is thought that when these particles impact geostationary (GEO) satellites they can cause SEUs as well as solar array degradation. We calculate the associated statistical correlations that each SEU occurs within one day, one week, two weeks, and one month of 10 MeV SPEs between 10 - 10,000 particle flux units (pfu). However, we find that SPEs are most prevalent at solar maximum and that the SEUs on Inmarsat's satellites occur out of phase with the solar maximum. Ultimately, this suggests that SPEs are not the primary cause of the Inmarsat SEUs. A better understanding of the causal relationship between SPEs and SEUs will help the satellite communications industry develop component and operational space weather mitigation techniques as well as help the space weather community to refine radiation models.
Date issued
2013-03
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80842
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Journal
Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Citation
Lohmeyer, Whitney Q., Kerri Cahoy and Shiyang Liu. "Causal Relationships between Solar Proton Events and Single Event Upsets for Communication Satellites." In 2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, 2-9 March 2013. p.1-10. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Version: Author's final manuscript
Other identifiers
INSPEC Accession Number: 13502879
ISBN
978-1-4673-1812-9
ISSN
1095-323X

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