Radiation Hardened by Process (RHBP): Utilizes specialized fabrication processes for extreme reliability, with higher costs and longer development times.
Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD): Uses circuit techniques to enhance resilience against radiation, offering high performance and lower costs.
Design techniques for radiation-hardening, also known as “Radiation Hardness By Design (RHBD)”. The design techniques for RHBD can span from algorithmic level (e.g., software redundancy, error-detection-and-correction, etc.), architectural level (e.g., hardware redundancy such as triple-modular-redundancy), circuit-level (e.g., hardened flip-flops), transistor/device levels (such as dummy/pass-by transistors, resistors/capacitors/diodes, etc.), and layout levels.
RHDB techniques are increasingly popular because they can be incorporated into current state-of-the-art commercially-available fabrication processes. The ICs manufactured using RHBD can be packaged with good quality packaging (e.g., space enhanced plastic) and stringent qualification/reliability tests (e.g., industry/automotive grades). Hence, the lead-time to manufacture/qualify RHBD ICs would be short, and the availability (in the market) could be high. Put simply, RHBD ICs are often attractive for mid-short mission lifetime (e.g., ~10 years) at much lower cost.
