Early Failure Detection System for the SAB80C537 Microcontroller

摘要

Modern microcontrollers for automotive applications require a high level of reliability under harsh operating conditions. Accelerated life testing is an excellent methodology to study and validate the reliability of microcontrollers under those conditions. The purpose of the research presented in this paper is to develop equipment suitable to evaluate the reliability of microcontrollers operating in harsh environments. The Infineon SAB80C527 microcontroller was chosen to undertake stress tests simulating its function in harsh environments. To test the reliability of this microcontroller, we assembled a system where another microcontroller monitors the unit under test by running identical programs. If the behavior of the microcontroller running a program under accelerated testing differs from the unit operating under normal conditions, it is concluded that a failure has occurred. A personal computer connected through a serial port to the controller board registers the results of the test. The accelerated environmental tests applied were based on MIL-STD-883E and included testing at different degrees of temperature and humidity over diverse periods of time. These tests caused a number of failures in the devices. The devices with known problems were subjected to failure analysis. Some photos from these circuits are included in this paper, but it is still a work in progress.