ABSTRACT
“Extreme environment” electronics represents a very important niche industry within the trillion dollar global electronics infrastructure, and entails the design and implementation of electronic devices, circuits, subsystems, and systems capable of operating robustly in environmental surroundings lying outside the traditional domain of conventional commercial or military electronics specifications. Needless to say, there are degrees of “extreme,” some of which are far more challenging than others, and some of which no one-in-their-right-mind would ever attempt! In general, extreme environment electronics’ systems are by definition low-volume, but high value–add propositions, and hence can be extremely expensive to deploy. As an example, consider putting a weather satellite up into Earth orbit to monitor hurricanes; a very extreme environment, hence very costly to put in place and operate, but exceptionally important.
