Abstract :
To locate short circuits on a printed circuit board, a K-port parallel short detector can test K signal paths simultaneously. If the total number of signal paths N on a printed circuit board is larger than K, then we need to divide the testing process into multiple stages such that at most R signal paths are tested in each stage. In this paper, we design a parallel algorithm to locate all the short circuits among the N signal paths on a printed circuit board using a K-port parallel short detector where K<N. This algorithm consists of three main steps: (1) it partitions the set of signal paths {1,2,...,N} into disjoint sets S i´s such that Si contains at most K signal paths, and then it bisects Si into two disjoint sets T2i-1 and T2i, (2) it locates all the short circuits in Si for all i, and (3) it locates all the short circuits between Si and Sj for all i≠j by testing T2i-1 against T2j-1, T2i-1 against T2j, T2i against T2j-1, and T 2i against T2j
Keywords :
automatic testing; fault diagnosis; fault location; parallel algorithms; printed circuit testing; short-circuit currents; K-port parallel short detector; disjoint sets; multiple stages; parallel algorithm; printed circuit board; short circuits location; signal paths; Algorithm design and analysis; Circuit testing; Detectors; Electronic components; Instruments; Parallel algorithms; Printed circuits; Signal design; Signal detection; Signal processing;