David Humphrey
Honeywell
Tucson, AZ, USA
Lloyd Condra
Boeing Commercial Airplane Group
Seattle, WA, USA
Neeraj Pendse, Diganta Das, Chris Wilkinson and Michael Pecht
CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
http://www.calce.umd.edu
Abstract
Avionics applications generally require parts that operate reliably in temperature ranges much wider than the commercial 0-70oC ranges. However, the availability of electronic parts rated for operating temperature ranges wider than 0-70oC is decreasing, as semiconductor manufacturers gradually abandon the non-profitable military markets and their wide operating temperature range parts. The focus of the semiconductor manufacturers is largely on commercial applications e.g., computers, audiovisual equipments, and cellular phones. One way of meeting this availability problem for parts is "uprating." Uprating is a process to assess the ability of a part to meet the functionality and performance requirements of the applications in which the part is used outside the manufacturers' specification range. An Avionics Working Group and the CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Consortium at the University of Maryland has developed a guidebook consisting of methods for uprating electronic parts. This article presents an overview of these methods including definitions and descriptions.
Complete
article is available to CALCE Consortium Members.
© IEEE. Personal use of
this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish
this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating
new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists,
or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works
must be obtained from the IEEE.