Aerospace users are constantly looking for systems that bring new capabilities that have the following qualities:
- Robustness and Reliability
- Well established technological maturity
- Failure mechanisms based on graceful degradation
- Significantly lower mass, size and power consumption
Additionally, in the special case of harsh environment sensors the following parameters regarding the environment are important:
- Temperature range for operation
- Pressure range for operation
- Physical erosion parameters (gas flow rate, particle nature and density)
- Chemical corrosion parameters (gas composition and concentration)
In all likelihood the proposed harsh environment sensor will be affected by a combination of two or more of these parameters. These environmental parameters will directly influence the choice of packaging and device processing parameters.
