Evaluation of Error-Correcting Codes for Radiation-Tolerant Memory

In space, radiation particles can introduce temporary or permanent errors in memory systems. To protect against potential memory faults, either thick shielding or error-correcting codes (ECC) are used by memory modules. Thick shielding translates into increased mass, and conventional ECCs designed for memories are typically capable of correcting only a single error and detecting a double error. Decoding is usually performed through hard decisions where bits are treated as either correct or flipped in polarity. We demonstrate that low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are already prevalent in many communication applications can also be used to protect memories in space. Because the achievable code rate monotonically decreases with time due to the accumulation of permanent errors, the achievable rate serves as a useful metric in designing an appropriate ECC. We describe how to compute soft symbol reliabilities on our channel and compare the performance of soft-decision decoding LDPC codes against conventional hard-decision decoding of ReedSolomon (RS) codes and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes for a specific memory structure.