First Passage Time of a Lévy Degradation Model with Random Effects

This paper introduces the weighted-convolution Lévy degradation process motivated by a multiple-sensor system. To estimate the first passage time (FPT) of this degradation model, the method based on inverse Laplace transform and the saddlepoint approximation is proposed to obtain the certain percentile of the FPT distribution which is generally taken as an important index regarding product reliability. Although the likelihood function of such a …