Iddq Trending as a Precursor to Semiconductor Failure

Airborne electronic systems have been used virtually everywhere on board the military and commercial aircraft. Since Field Effect Transistors (FETs) are building blocks for the electronic systems and their components, the health status of the FET systems are required by the crew to assist in the operation of the aircraft electronic systems and obtain substantial safety and cost benefits. In this proposal, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) and Computer Aided Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) Electronic Products and Systems Center (EPSC) at the University of Maryland (College Park) propose a novel prognostic methodology based on the Iddq (Direct Drain Quiescent Current) testing technique for airborne FET-based electronic systems and their components. Our approach involves a low current sensor to monitor the in-circuit trend in Iddq of a semiconductor device; a feature library and a feature selection scheme to provide proper features extracted from available sensor data; a Hidden-Markov-Model (HMM) based state awareness and prediction tool to relate detected incipient fault conditions to accurate useful-life-remaining predictions for any point in time in a device’s service life; and a Post-prognostic Processing module (PPM) to reduce the prognostic uncertainty and enhance the prognostic accuracy and reliability. BENEFITS: The proposed prognostic approach is promising and has significant potential to improve the reliability of electronic systems in the Air Force. We expect this calibration process will be at least 10 million dollars over the next decade. We also expect the same technology to commercial aircraft for substantial safety and cost benefits.