Degradation failure modeling of SLD based on one-dimensional Brown motion

Integrating the merits of LD's big output power and LED's broad spectrum width, superluminescent diode (SLD) is the most important and fragile part of fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs). Thus, SLD's reliability determines the operational reliability and maintenance expenses of FOGs to some extent. Reliability of SLDs was studied based on degradation data for their long life characteristics. By analyzing degradation mechanisms of SLDs under environmental stress, one-dimensional Brown motion model was presented as their life distribution model whose parameters could be estimated from the degradation measures of the SLDs. This method can obtain SLDs' reliability without failure data, overcoming the drawbacks of traditional time-to-failure analysis method which requires failure data. This estimation method shows its significance for it has been proven to be economical in test costs and time.