Radiation Damage to Electronics at the LHC

Control systems installed in LHC underground areas using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components are affected by the risk of ‘Single Event Effects’. In the LHC tunnel, in addition, cumulative dose effects have also to be considered. While for the tunnel equipment certain radiation tolerant design criteria were already taken into account during the LHC construction phase, most of the equipment placed in adjacent and partly shielded areas was not conceived nor tested for their current radiation environment. Given the large amount of electronics being installed in these areas, a CERN wide project called R2E (‘Radiation To Electronics’) has been initiated to quantify the danger of radiation-induced failures and to mitigate the risk for nominal beams and beyond to below one failure a week. This paper briefly summarizes the analysis and mitigation approach chosen for the LHC, highlights a few of the encountered difficulties and the obtained experience in the following aspects: radiation fields & related calculations, monitoring and benchmarking; commercial equipment/systems and their use in the LHC radiation fields; radiation tests with dedicated test areas and facilities.