Reliability Studies of a Sensor

Any system including communication system will be made up of several subsystems The subsystems of a communications system are built with active devices and components. The successful operation or reliability of the system depends on the proper functioning of all components in the system for the required time duration. Reliability studies of a component help in estimating the mean life and nature of failure distribution of the component. A knowledge of reliability of all constituent components enables the estimation of system reliability.

In this paper the actual failure data of a temperature sensor are used to fit a theoretical distribution. Goodness of fit test is carried out to find the best fit among different types of distribution, namely, Exponential, Weibull, Normal and Log-Normal. Reliability of the temperature sensor is estimated using empirical method and using the selected failure distribution. The two sets of readings are compared and discussed.