Coding with Side Information for Radiation-Tolerant Memory Devices

Memory devices aboard spacecraft experience radiation-induced errors either in the form of temporary upsets (soft errors) or permanent defects (hard or stuck-at errors). Error-correcting codes (ECCs) are used to recover memory content from errors where defec- tive cells are either regarded as erasures by the decoder or entire blocks containing defective cells are marked as unusable. In this article, alternative coding schemes are investigated for memory devices in space, where the encoder is provided with the locations of the defective cells, denoted by side information. This coding approach has the potential to improve the overall storage capacity of memory devices, since the information theoretic capacity of a channel where side information is only available at the encoder is the same as the capacity where side information is available at both the encoder and decoder. Spacecraft memory controllers typically scrub memory devices periodically for errors. Partial side information can be obtained during this scrubbing process by comparing the ECC decoder output with its input and thereby avoid the need for additional cell tests or storage overhead. In be- tween scrubbings, the encoder can use this partial side information to account for perma- nent defects to improve reliability or to increase the storage capacity of onboard memory devices. In order to achieve performance gains for practical memory systems, several coding schemes that adaptively incorporate the codeword with the known side information are proposed in this article. The proposed coding schemes are evaluated by numerical simula- tions on a memory channel model characterized by soft and hard errors. Simulation results show that while coding with complete side information at the encoder offers the most performance gain compared to when coding without side information is used, coding with partial side information can close the gap between the optimal and current approach with- out incurring much additional overhead.