A methodology for microcontroller signal frequency stress prediction

Survey of thermography in electronics inspection

“…This non-contact technique has been applied in inspecting a variety of electronic board defects including open, short circuit, intermittent defects [5][6][7][8][9], solder joint integrity [10][11][12] and fault diagnosis [13][14][15]. More importantly, it has also been applied for electronics stress level prediction under temperature, voltage, signal density, and mechanical vibration stresses [16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…So far, we have found relatively little work in the area of developing real-time systems for defect or failure detection that can be deployed in a mass production environment other than the systems developed by the Air Force Air Logistics Center in Utah [7,9,15,21]. There has also been relatively little work reported in the area of predicting the life-time of electronic components and devices, other than the work by Hsieh [16][17][18][19][20]. For example, in a mass production environment, detection of BGA solder joint integrity defects (e.g., HIP defects) is still an open problem to be solved.…”

“…Additional performance measure variables include average heating rate and grayscale change rates over time. Previous research by Allred [15] and the Hsieh [16][17][18][19][20] suggests that heating rate and/or average heating rate are good indicators of component quality status. Grayscale change rates were used because the infrared camera captures images over time and-with appropriate gray scale calibration-the brightness of the images is proportional to temperature changes.…”

Thermal profiling techniques for electronics inspection

“…Previous research by Allred [15] and the Hsieh [16][17][18][19][20] suggests that heating rate and/or average heating rate are good indicators of component quality status. Grayscale change rates were used because the infrared camera captures images over time and-with appropriate gray scale calibration-the brightness of the images is proportional to temperature changes.…”

“…Hsieh [19] investigated effects of clock frequency stress on a high performance microcontroller used to control the on-off frequency of LEDs on a printed circuit board. Based on the design specification, several frequency levels between 0 and the terminal clock frequency were selected.…”