Surface mount technology reliability monitoring system

Abstract

A ball grid array device includes a monitoring circuit of inactive solder joints and a processor such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other processor capable of determining the open or closed status of the monitoring circuit. The monitoring circuit traverses one or more of the solder joints between components being joined, such as a printed circuit board and an integrated circuit device. In certain embodiments, the inactive solder joints may be located within regions of the ball grid array that are predisposed to failure, such as at the periphery or corners of the printed circuit board, or proximate to regions that experience a broad range of operating temperatures. The failure of a solder joint within the monitoring circuit can be used to schedule maintenance of the ball grid array device prior to failure of an active solder joint.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.