STM Journals Peer-reviewed research from Consortium e-Learning Network

Research & Reviews : Journal of Space Science & Technology Review Article

Reliability-Aware Mathematical Model for Radiation-Hardened Satellite Communication Systems

  1. Rosalin Pradhan Department of Electrical Engineering, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, Dhenkanal
  2. Sidhartha Kumar Samal Department of Electrical Engineering, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, Dhenkanal
  3. Sritam Parida Department of Electrical Engineering, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, Dhenkanal
  4. Bibhu Prasad Ganthia Department of Electrical Engineering, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, Dhenkanal

Abstract

Satellite communication systems operate in radiation environments in which total ionizing dose (TID), displacement damage, and single-event effects (SEE) can progressively degrade electronic, optoelectronic, and communication components and can ultimately reduce link availability and mission reliability. This paper develops a Reliability-Aware Radiation-Hardened Satellite Communication Model (R-RHSCM) that mathematically couples the orbital radiation environment, accumulated radiation dose, component degradation, communication-link performance, single-event failure probability, redundancy, thermal effects, and adaptive mitigation. The proposed formulation first derives the particle-flux-dependent dose rate and cumulative TID, followed by displacement- damage accumulation and radiation-induced degradation of gain, noise, attenuation, and component failure rate. The communication subsystem is represented through a radiation-dependent link-budget equation incorporating transmit power, antenna gains, free-space loss, atmospheric attenuation, pointing loss, and radiation-induced hardware loss. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), bit-error rate (BER), outage probability, and instantaneous communication availability are subsequently derived. A Markov reliability model is introduced to represent healthy, degraded, failed, and recovery states, while parallel redundancy and radiation-aware switching are incorporated to improve system-level reliability. The resulting reliability-aware objective simultaneously minimizes BER, outage probability, radiation-induced degradation, energy consumption, and failure probability subject to transmit-power, temperature, radiation-dose, and availability constraints. A local sensitivity and stability analysis further identifies the radiation operating region within which the communication subsystem remains reliable. The framework is intended for quantitative analysis and design of radiation-hardened satellite communication architectures, including RF and optical communication terminals.

Keywords

References (10)

  1. Johnson D. A Five-Zone Architecture for Radiation Shielding Performance Standards in Spacecraft and Off-Earth Infrastructure. Available at SSRN 7088339. 2026 Jun 13.
  2. DiBari R. What reliability engineers should know about space radiation effects. In2013 Proceedings Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) 2013 Jan 28 (pp. 1- 2). IEEE.
  3. Claeys C, Simoen E. Radiation effects in advanced semiconductor materials and devices. Springer Science & Business Media; 2013 Nov 11.
  4. Zhan Y, Cao S, Wang Y, He J. Single event effect testing and radiation-hardened designing of several commercial optical transceivers. Optik. 2017 Jun 1;138:550-9.
  5. Kaushal H, Jain VK, Kar S. Free space optical communication. New Delhi: Springer india; 2017 Jan 6.
  6. Czerwinski A. Atmospheric modeling of free-space optical transmission: satellite downlinks and horizontal channels. Optical and Quantum Electronics. 2025 Oct 13;57(10):577.
  7. Glein R, Schmidt B, Rittner F, Teich J, Ziener D. A self-adaptive SEU mitigation system for FPGAs with an internal block RAM radiation particle sensor. In2014 IEEE 22nd Annual International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines 2014 May 11 (pp. 251-258). IEEE.
  8. Anwer J, Meisner S, Platzner M. Dynamic Reliability Management for FPGA‐Based Systems. International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing. 2020;2020(1):2808710.
  9. Zhang Q, Furqan MD, Nuzhat T, Machida F, Andrade E. Dependability of UAV-based networks and computing systems: A survey. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.16786. 2025 Jun 20.
  10. Girard S, Morana A, Ladaci A, Robin T, Mescia L, Bonnefois JJ, Boutillier M, Mekki J, Paveau A, Cadier B, Marin E. Recent advances in radiation-hardened fiber-based technologies for space applications. Journal of Optics. 2018 Sep 1;20(9):093001. 11. Li J, Chen Q, Zhou J, Cao Z, Li T, Liu F, Yang Z, Chang S, Zhou K, Ming Y, Yan T. Radiation damage mechanisms and research status of radiation-resistant optical fibers: A review. Sensors. 2024 May 20;24(10):3235.
Support