A remaining useful life prediction method based on condition monitoring for LED driver

Switching Mode Power Supply (SMPS) is the most important source for electronics and equipment, therefore its reliability acts as a critical factor impacting on their working lifetime. Applications show that aluminum electrolytic capacitors and some power components like diodes and MOSFETs, all of which turn out to be key factors to SMPS' lifetime, are of higher failure rates in SMPS. In fact, the failure of electronic products is a gradual course, which is usually resulted from the degradation of separate electronic components. In this research, the LED driver is regarded as the research object and the experimental study of its degradation is discussed. To study the LED driver degradation owning to these critical components, such as power MOSFETs, diodes and aluminum electrolytic capacitors, the components' performance parameters which can reflect their degradation need monitoring. In order to acquire remarkable effects, accelerated aging test is adopted in this paper. The study of LED driver degradation on basis of the theory of PoF (Physics of Failure) is meaningful to the reliability research of SMPS and provides an approach for the prognostics of its RUL(remaining useful life).