Printed Circuit Board Deconstruction Techniques

The primary purpose of printed circuit board (PCB) reverse engineering is to determine electronic system or subsystem functionality by analyzing how components are interconnected. We performed a series of experiments using both inexpensive home-based solutions and state-of-the-art technologies with a goal of removing exterior coatings and accessing individual PCB layers. This paper presents our results from the most effective techniques.

[1]  Dick James,et al.  The state-of-the-art in semiconductor reverse engineering , 2011, 2011 48th ACM/EDAC/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC).

[2]  J.J. Shea.  Electronic failure analysis handbook: techniques and applications for electronic and electrical packages, components, and assemblies [Book Reviews] , 2000, IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine.

[3]  David L. Landis,et al.  A rapid prototyping methodology for reverse engineering of legacy electronic systems , 1999, Proceedings Tenth IEEE International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping. Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype (Cat. No.PR00246).

[4]  Evstatin Krastev,et al.  MODERN 2 D / 3 D X-RAY INSPECTION-- EMPHASIS ON BGA , QFN , 3 D PACKAGES , AND COUNTERFEIT COMPONENTS , 2010 .

[5]  R.C. Mata,et al.  Reverse engineering for obsolete single layer printed circuit board (PCB) , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Computing & Informatics.

[6]  Brian MacCleery,et al.  right the first time , 2008 .

[7]  Rainer Stark,et al.  Computer Vision Analysis of 3D Scanned Circuit Boards for Functional Testing and Redesign , 2013 .

[8]  Ian Vince McLoughlin.  Secure Embedded Systems: The Threat of Reverse Engineering , 2008, 2008 14th IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems.