Understanding aging mechanisms of electronic components is of extreme importance in the aerospace domain where they are part of numerous critical subsystems including avionics. In particular, power MOSFETs are of special interest as they are involved in high voltage switching circuits such as drivers for electrical motors. With increased use of electronics in aircraft control, it becomes more important to understand the degradation of these components in aircraft specific environments.

Differential protection is a popular method to protect aircraft generators against winding faults. Traditional relay-based systems have a limited capability to distinguish between differential current resulting from a winding fault, and the one resulting from measurement noise or current saturation, resulting in false alarms and unnecessary equipment shutdown. Modern aircraft generators are monitored and controlled by advanced generator control units, and therefore, sophisticated signal processing algorithms can be implemented to enhance the differential protection performance.