Reliability assessment of FOGs used for satellite from degradation data

Reliability of fibre-optic gyroscopes(FOGs) used for satellite exposed to space radiation was studied based on degradation data. With the great technology progress on FOGs in recent years, more and more FOGs have been applied in all kinds of satellites for attitude control. For satellites always have long lives, reliability of FOGs used for satellites has been focused on. Based on analysis of degradation mechanisms of FOGs under radiation environment, Normal-Poisson hybrid stochastic process model was presented as its life distribution model whose parameters could be estimated from the degradation measures of the FOGs. This method could obtain FOGs'reliability without failure data, which overcomes the drawbacks of traditional time-to-failure analysis method relying on failure data. This estimation method shows its significance in saving test costs and time.