Automatic Fault Diagnosis for Power Electronic Systems

Currently the availability of mobile radar transmitters is poor and this is particularly true of military systems employing gridded-gun travelling wave tubes. Many studies have shown that a significant factor has been inaccurate fault diagnosis. A substantial proportion of high power components removed from systems have proved to be perfectly good. To establish this it has been necessary to return suspected components to the manufacturer because the test equipment is too large and costly for on-site deployment. Thus many expensive components are needlessly scrapped, down-times are excessive and future equipment reliability tends to be degraded by the wear and tear resulting from unnecessary work.