Large scale radiation tolerance assurance for LHC machine electronics

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a high intensity, high-energy proton collider presently under construction at CERN. Electronic equipment will be placed in the machine tunnel and underground areas close to the beam. This equipment will have to operate reliable in a complex radiation field with high energetic neutrons in the GeV energy range. In this paper we present an efficient and original radiation tolerance assurance approach. It consists of exposing candidate components and entire systems to a complex radiation field, similar to the application radiation field. The method allows making a pre-selection of commercial off the shelf electronics. Irradiation in the complex field is also used to test the functionality of final prototypes and series produced devices.