The requirements of the link between different applications in the automotive area have been increasing rapidly during the last years. Especially the reliability of the electric/optical interface device for MOST® (Media Oriented System Transport) applications, FOT (fiber optical transceiver), is very important and of concern.
The compliance of the required specification (for electrical or optical parameters in the entire environment) is proven by an unique and innovative procedure for automotive components. For the FOT this means also a specific and dedicated qualification procedure to evaluate the portion of the optical data transfer. Today's qualification procedures for semiconductor devices consider electrical and assembly (package) related parameters. The special optical part of the FOT (LED and photodiode) and the accompanying circuits represent a new class of parameters that have to be qualified. Presently, there is no defined standard to get an answer about the quality and reliability of those parts. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an unique standard procedure to qualify MOST devices.
It is important and very useful to examine the requirements for car environment during the qualification procedure as well as the design and production process and also a parameter that represents the desired function. Otherwise it will end up into fundamental consequences for the following product development process (redesign / time shift).
With the experiences from well known qualification standards and with the view of the special requirements of the FOT, there is the distinctive opportunity to establish a procedure that accommodates the particular technical demands in the application. The high benefit of this procedure is a very precise proposition about the expected product quality and reliability level.
This newly developed method can be used in every area where new technologies or new processes are introduced for the first time.