LED system reliability

Abstract

This paper presents our effort to predict the system reliability of Solid State Lighting (SSL) applications. A SSL system is composed of a LED engine with micro-electronic driver(s) that supplies power to the optic design. Knowledge of system level reliability is not only a challenging scientific exercise but it is also crucial for successful adoption of future SSL systems. Currently, the lifetime of a SSL system provided by the manufacturers is often based on just the life time of the LED emitter but a malfunction of the system in reality is often induced by the failure or degradation of a combination of subsystems/interfaces. Hence, a significant improvement in the future SSL system can be achieved when the system level reliability is well understood by proper experimental and simulation techniques.