Aerospace & Defense

The use of RF systems in Aerospace and Defense platforms is likely the largest market application of RF semiconductors. Radar, Navigation, Electronic Counter Measures, Electronic Counter-Countermeasures, Communications, and various sensors play an ever-increasing role in our military and aerospace equipment. Reliable electronics are the enablers for the market. Reliability testing is driven in this market by the following:

1. Critical mission requirements and the essential need for operational success.
2. Typical mission success relies on high technical performance achievements.
3. Mission durations are usually “long-use” expectations.
4. Maintenance cost (down-time) leads to inefficient system utilization.
5. System performance consistency from unit to unit for effective deployment.
6. Performance degradation with age would drive maintenance service costs.

Environmental extremes and remoteness associated with space applications impose additional considerations concerning device reliability. Satellite launchers expect equipment to hold up under the wide temperature swings and more intense electromagnetic properties outside of the earth’s atmosphere. Added to the harsher conditions imposed on the device, is the difficulty of reaching them for repair and servicing.

When repair is not an option, no margin for error exists. Projects deployed in space often have lifecycles measured in decades instead of years or months. Satellite device components must not only meet statistically projected lifetime requirements but also go through burn-in to weed out any substandard parts. Accel-RF’s multifunction test systems can accomplish both tasks for achieving as close as possible to 100-percent quality assurance screening in a fast and effective manner.

The reliable flow of secure information determines the strategic advantage in any command-and-control situation. For this reason, military transmissions typically rely on narrowly fixed-band frequencies driven at high power levels. Finding a means to efficiently test military communication units over a wide range of frequencies, with sufficient output power characterization with age, can be a difficult task.

Accel-RF designs test platforms with frequency source units that contiguously cover large portions of the RF spectrum. The platform provides the required DC power sources to drive devices to RF power levels, for both RF inputs and outputs, to measure small-signal to saturation output power performance. This capability allows for easy acquisition of meaningful data on application-specific key performance indicators of the device or component. With this system-level performance data, the network engineering can be confidently assessed, and safety margin built in to keep the network operational under the various environments envisioned in the field.

Obtaining advantages on the modern battlefield requires complete knowledge and control of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electronic Warfare (EW) uses directed beams of RF energy to jam or disable the enemy’s tracking and communications equipment. Devices must have the capability to operate at all possible frequencies that may be present in order to gain complete coverage of the opportunities and address the threats inherent in the battlefield arena.

Testing with Accel-RF’s platform solutions enables the gathering of data on key performance indicators for devices and components intended for use at specific operational frequencies and power levels encountered in the EW environment. The ability to establish the reliability of components at varying frequency bands of interest (X-Band, Ku-Band, etc.) works to create the confidence needed to win approval for contracts related to these types of high-value military applications.

Assessing quality assurance with the level of accuracy and statistically meaningful data sizes required by aerospace and defense contracts requires tracking data across multiple wafer lots. By using Accel-RF’s turnkey systems to collect data on multiple batches, contractors build a verifiable record of a repeatable and reliable manufacturing process used in their foundry. This allows the manufacturer to demonstrate statistical process control and, subsequently, the consistency of their fabrication procedure. Consistent performance may be used to drive change and improvement in the process. This, in turn, drives quality and reliability improvements.

The test results accumulated from Accel-RF’s instrument platforms quickly allows the manufacturer to quantify changes from adjustments made to process steps in the fabrication production line. For instance, if the plant implements a different metallization scheme or a variation to its passivation process, a new round of testing on the Accel-RF platform provides data on how the change affected device reliability and more importantly device RF performance. Information on intrinsic reliability and comparison of the degradation of key performance indicators to intended application parameters enables device manufacturers to assess the effect of their process or raw material changes on the finalized product early in the manufacturing route. Any detrimental performance detected may allow for a stop in workflow or scrap before further cost and time are wasted.

Testing with Accel-RF equipment can also help contractors find the root causes of component malfunctions. Manufacturers can submit devices to test regimes designed to accelerate degradation in a known device parameter, such as DC and/or RF. At a predefined level of degradation, the device testing may be automatically stopped. At this point, the degradation has reached a severe level of change, but catastrophic failure was averted. Sending these degraded chips for analysis with an electron microscope or similar failure analysis tool can help determine if a process problem, material selection, or a combination of both issues, caused the degradation and eventual failure.

When selecting components for use in aerospace and defense applications, reliability is one of the most crucial considerations in choosing a manufacturer. The multi-dimensional test equipment available from Accel-RF provides the ability to thoroughly assess reliability concerns and performance degradation expectancy of today’s RF semiconductor components. Manufacturers gain the added ability to gather and share data among cross-functional groups for complete statistical analysis and decision-making assessments. With application-relevant data based on measured results, the manufacturer can present their products with confidence to industries that demand nothing less than the most reliable part available. The most reliable parts available come from manufacturers with high-reliability IQ levels. The “Field-Proven” platforms available from Accel-RF provide the tools for expanding reliability IQ.