The loss of intellectual property (IP) related to electronic circuits and systems is a critical challenge in maintaining the supply chain of military programs. According to the DMEA, the B-2 Bomber encountered more than 140 obsolete components and submodules that could not be acquired for the B-2 Radar Warning Receiver (RWR). In addition to system age issues, design IP and support documentation for critical parts had been lost. With programs expected to live much longer than originally planned, it is not reasonable to expect that OEMs can support every version of a product that they have ever developed indefinitely. Sometimes the OEMs don't even exist long into a program's life cycle and the IP is then lost forever. In this paper, we will present a non-destructive alternative to reverse engineering. The technology presented starts with the micro computed tomography (CT) of the sample. The CT volume is then used to generate slices of the sample, which then allows us to identify the different layers of the printed circuit board as well as the location and identity of critical components on the board. These layers are then used as input to ScanCad, a software that can recreate complete schematics from the layers of the PCB. Detailed case studies will be presented to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this non-destructive reverse engineering process.
展开▼
