Motivation With the rapid development of low-altitude economy, the radiation environment safety of low-altitude aircraft such as drones and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft has attracted increasing attention. Traditional views hold that the dense lower atmosphere is an effective barrier against cosmic radiation, but the reduced feature sizes of modern integrated circuits (ICs) significantly increases their susceptibility to single-event effects (SEEs). Most traditional studies have focused on the effects of particles such as neutrons and protons, while systematic assessments of the risks induced by muons — the most abundant charged particles at sea level— are still scarce, especially during extreme solar events. Therefore, this study quantitatively evaluates the muon-induced SEE risk for low-altitude aircraft in different regions of China under static cosmic-ray background and ground level enhancements (GLEs), aiming to provide key insights for the operational safety of the next-generation low-altitude aviation platforms.

Methods  This study employs city-specific atmospheric model to simulate the atmospheric shower processes in different cities within the CORSIKA framework, yielding reliable energy spectra of low-energy muons (10–100 MeV) in different regions. This study utilizes electrical simulation data from other research groups to estimate muon-induced SEE cross sections in transistors with different process nodes, covering bulk, FD-SOI, and FinFET processes. Subsequently, by integrating solar energetic particle (SEP) energy spectra related to ground level enhancement (GLE) events, we evaluate the muon-induced SEE risks for systems of different sizes under static conditions (only cosmic-ray injection) and GLE event scenarios.

Results Our results indicate that under static conditions, flight control systems (with 1 MB of memory) containing advanced process nodes ( \leqslant 45 \;\mathrmnm) and bulk transistors face non-negligible muon-induced SEE risks in all cities in China. In contrast, the systems utilizing FD-SOI transistors can effectively alleviate such risks. For systems with large memory capacity (1 GB), redundancy and other radiation-hardening measures must be taken regardless of the process technology used. Regarding GLE events, this study innovatively introduces the concept of muon hazard levels to assess regional changes in risk. Specifically, during GLEs, the aggravation of muon-induced SEE risks in mid-to-low latitude regions is negligible, whereas such risks significantly increase in high-latitude regions.