A Power Measuring Technique for Built-in Test Purposes

A built-in configuration for monitoring the good operating condition of an instrumentation system (with analog and digital circuits) in real-time, is presented in this work. The approach is based on a current monitoring circuit which records the changes in the power supply current of the system without practically interfering the operation of the system and sums it within a specific time period. The comparison of the resulting power consumption measurement for hardware modules while executing certain tasks (defined in time by the software) with already known values may indicate the good operating condition of the system. This methodology may also provide information useful to power optimization techniques