OPCoSA: an Optimized Product Code for space applications

The integrated circuit shrinkage increases the probability and the number of errors in memories due to the increase in the sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. Critical application systems employ Error Correction Codes (ECC) to mitigate memory faults. This work introduces the Optimized Product Code for Space Applications (OPCoSA), an ECC that optimizes its original version called PCoSA, reducing 16-redundancy bits and keeping high error correction capacity. We evaluated the optimized ECC through tests with 36 specific error patterns, burst errors, and exhaustive analysis. Additionally, we compared the synthesis results in hardware, reliability, and redundancy to four other ECCs dedicated to the space application. Tests have shown that OPCoSA corrects all 36 error patterns and 100% of cases for up to four burst errors; besides, it has correction rates of 100%, 100%, 95.4%, and 78.9% for exhaustive errors of dimension one to four, respectively.