Reliability Modeling & Analysis for Active Phased Array Antenna Design

The results of the mathematical reliability model developed in this study demonstrate that Mean Time Between Critical Failures (MTBCF) predictions are appropriate compared to the antenna systems with similar complexity. The simulation findings also give implications as to the minimum required number of T/R modules that should be functioning to satisfy various mission-critical performance criteria defined as a percentage of different radar detection ranges. The results are also evaluated in terms of its reliability effect on life cycle cost. In future work, the degradation in antenna performance will be measured in terms of rise in side lobes. In addition to this, the cost effects of increasing the MTBCF of the active components of the antenna will be discussed. For this, fault-tolerant architecture concepts such as redundancy, derating and appropriate material selection, etc. will be explored in detail.