Reliability Estimation of an Active Array Antenna Element for Space-Borne Synthetic Aperture Radar Using Ground Test Data

The active array antenna of a space-borne synthetic aperture radar instrument comprises a large number of trans-receive modules. These are characterized and tested at various stages of realization viz. module level, antenna panel, integrated payload and spacecraft level. During the realization of the system, some failures were observed in the trans-receive modules. After detailed failure investigations, root cause of the failure was identified and corrective actions were implemented after validation. Failures observed in a system always trigger concerns for the long term system reliability. Reliability estimation of space-borne systems is carried out using MILHDBK-217 which is the widely followed standard. However, this approach does not consider the tests carried out and failures observed. Availability of a large volume of characterization test data opens up the opportunity to carry out the reliability estimation using this data. This paper brings out the reliability estimation of trans-receive modules using the data of ground tests conducted at different stages and the failures thereof.