A Data-Driven Approach for Predicting Remaining Useful Life of Semiconductor Devices Based on Machine Learning and Synthetic Data Generation. A Review and Case Study on SiC MOSFETs

The prediction of the remaining useful life of electronic components is a crucial aspect for predictive maintenance and system reliability across multiple fields and applications. Data-driven approaches, particularly those methods based on machine learning, are currently being used due to their ability to model complex degradation patterns without the need for explicit physical modeling. However, several challenges are still present, such as the availability and quality of data and the uncertainty quantification of the results. To tackle these obstacles, this work explores the use of synthetic data for augmenting datasets, as well as feature selection and the assessment of different neural network architectures, including models with recurrent layers and probabilistic output. The proposed approach was evaluated on a silicon carbide metal-oxide- semiconductor field-effect transistor dataset. The best results for modeling the remaining useful life of these devices were obtained with a model trained using an augmented dataset with synthetic data. This model’s probabilistic output allows building a confidence interval for the predictions, which is helpful to identify outliers. This model outperformed other state-of-the-art algorithms using only 4 out of 22 features, demonstrating the effectiveness of the feature selection procedure, the data augmentation method, and the neural network architecture for this case study.