Crosstalk fault detection by dynamic I/sub dd/

Undesired capacitive crosstalk between signals is expected to be a significant concern in deep submicron circuits. New test techniques are needed for these crosstalk faults since they may cause unacceptable performance degradation. We analyze the impact of crosstalk faults on a circuit´s power dissipation. Crosstalk faults can be detected by monitoring the dynamic supply current. The test method is based on a recently developed dynamic I/sub dd/ test metric, the energy consumption ratio (ECR). ECR-based test has been shown to be effective at tolerating the impact of process variations. In this paper, we apply an ECR-based test method called ECR-VDD test to detect the crosstalk faults. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by simulation results.