New ITU standards to prevent soft errors caused by cosmic rays
New ITU standards provide guidelines to protect telecommunication equipment from ‘soft errors’ caused by particle radiation stemming from cosmic rays.
Particle radiation of neutrons generated by cosmic rays and alpha particles generated by minute quantities of radioisotopes found in semiconductor devices can create soft errors, a phenomenon where bits within the data on the device have their values reversed. This can affect the performance telecommunication equipment in such a way that adversely affects quality of service.
Although soft errors are temporary – rectified by restarting a semiconductor device or overwriting the affected data – the new ITU standards aim to prevent these errors and thus the time and expense required to correct them.
The new standards were developed by the ITU standardization expert group for ‘environment and circular economy’, ITU-T Study Group 5.
The standards provide guidelines for the design and testing of telecommunication equipment to increase resilience to the effects of particle radiation, helping industry to incorporate this resilience in new telecommunication equipment from the outset of its production.
Overview: ITU K.124 “Overview of particle radiation effects on telecommunication systems”
Testing: ITU K.130 “Neutron irradiation test methods for telecommunication equipment”
Design: ITU K.131 “Design methodologies for telecommunication systems applying soft error measures”
Supplement: ITU K.Suppl.11 “Soft error measures for field programmable gate arrays”
ITU-T Study Group 5 leads ITU’s standardization activities on electromagnetic compatibility, lightning protection and electromagnetic effects; ICTs related to the environment, climate change, energy efficiency and clean energy; and circular economy, including e-waste.
Learn more about ITU-T Study Group 5 in an ITU interview with the group’s Chair, Victoria Sukenik.