Toward a BITE for Real-Time Life Estimation of Capacitors Subjected to Thermal Stress

The use of a built-in test equipment (BITE) that is able to provide a real-time diagnostic of a monitored device allows increasing reliability and decreasing costs. The BITE operation can be based on a suitable life model of the device that must relate the time to failure to the “stress history” of the component. The life model is developed by exploiting the results of a proper measurement campaign. This paper investigates a life model for capacitors subjected to both constant and time-varying temperatures by illustrating the test system and discussing the achieved results.