Embedded diagnosis in digital systems

A method is proposed for embedded fault diagnosis in digital systems using built-in self-test (BIST) facilities and pseudorandom test sequences. The novelty of the diagnostic strategy is in bisectioning of detected faults instead of traditional bisectioning of patterns in the test sequences. Opposite to the classical approach of fault diagnosis in digital circuits which targets all failing patterns, in the proposed method not all failing patterns are necessarily needed to be fixed for diagnosis. A possibility is analyzed to improve the diagnostic resolution by using multiple signature analyzers. Experimental results demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of the approach.