Remaining Useful Life Prediction of SiC MOSFETs Based on SVMD-SSA-Transformer Model

Accurately assessing the remaining useful life (RUL) is a significant challenge to the reliability of Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs and is crucial for their safe operation. Consequently, this paper proposes a novel data-driven prediction method that integrates Successive Variational Mode Decomposition (SVMD), the Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), and the Transformer model. The threshold voltage Vth is selected as the degradation parameter for prediction. Firstly, SVMD is utilized to decompose the original Vth data into a degradation trend component and several fluctuation components with different central frequencies, thereby providing a more precise feature for prediction models. Subsequently, based on the Transformer model, trend predictions are conducted on each intrinsic mode function (IMF) derived from SVMD, and these results are aggregated as the final predicted value of Vth. The hyperparameters of the Transformer are optimized using SSA to enhance prediction accuracy. Ultimately, a power cycling platform is constructed to acquire the dataset of the device, where the device is subjected to rated current and 80 °C junction temperature fluctuation stress during testing. Building upon this, the difference between the number of cycles when Vth reaches its upper limit and the current number of cycles is determined as the predicted RUL value. Results demonstrate that compared to both a single Transformer model and the SVMD-Transformer model, the proposed method achieves a higher coefficient of determination (R2) and a lower root mean square error (RMSE), indicating superior prediction performance.