Development of Custom Test Solution for Validation of Reverse Engineered Circuit Card Assemblies for MIL-Aero Systems

Military and Aerospace system electronics operate with lifetimes far beyond normal consumer systems, and in more strenuous environments than ordinary commercial products. It is not uncommon for manufacturers of circuit card assemblies to go out of business, or the integrated circuit manufacturer to discontinue their line of parts before the aerospace system is retired because of cost-inefficiencies, or for the military weapon system to have missing or inadequate documentation. These common obsolescence issues make the electronics unsupportable, creating a sustainment issue for existing systems.

One solution is to reverse engineer the hardware at the circuit card level and then replicate the design with modern parts still in production. Traditional methods of reverse engineering involve copying a golden board to create a known good netlist and schematic and Gerber files necessary to manufacture the board. However, this method is heavily dependent on electrical testing in the form of continuity checking of the original card, and in voltage and current measurements to verify the results post-fabrication, which can be very time consuming

This paper explores benefits of leveraging custom testing and aggressive use of simulations to enhance efficiency and reduce the time to completion for reverse engineering efforts. An example of a reverse engineering effort to overcome obsolescence was Defense Microelectronics Activity?s (DMEAs) support of their customer? flight control system. Although documentation for the system was extremely limited, DMEA reverse engineered, manufactured, verified, and delivered unique circuit cards for the system.