Probabilistic design for reliability (PDfR) in space electronics and photonics: A change of vision

To bring new and immature technologies from commercial electronics toward aerospace applications is believed to enclose some reliability risks. Prior to pass them into play, such unknown technologies considered as not yet flight proven, must be carefully studied and qualified properly. How will new electronic technologies (such as Gallium Nitride, optoelectronics, nanotechnologies, and packaging techniques) perform when included in harsh environment application? How to bring them in the scene of application compatible to time to market goals? Due to the lack of well defined adequate standards to procure and qualify them, it´s a real uphill battle to propose innovative design based on new technologies in High reliability application. They are requiring skills in various domain and long term in-house qualification programs. What are the actual advantages and drawbacks of existing standards knowing that they are based on heritage of well known technologies? How the probability of failure of components inside equipment can be calculated when stressed by multiple simultaneous constraints imposed by the three following leading edge i.e. a) harsh application environments, b) performance limits of technologies and c) adequate design rules to reduce failure risk (among SOA - Safe Operating Area). Evolving methodology must be constructed based on results of experiments from FOAT (Failure Oriented Accelerated Testing) and QT (Qualification Testing). This presentation will propose some general issues identified in microelectronics accelerated testing and reliability tests in various harsh environments. Understanding the need, defining goals, accumulating field failure data, developing reliability models and educating our customers is a certain approach.