Title :
Design of an improved watchdog circuit for microcontroller-based systems
Author :
Hefny, Mohamed S. ; Amer, Hassanein H.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., American Univ., Cairo, Egypt
Abstract :
This paper presents an improved design for a watchdog circuit. Previously, watchdog timers detected refresh inputs that were slower than usual. If a failure causes the microcontroller to produce faster than usual refresh inputs, the watchdog will not detect it. This new design detects failures that produce faster than usual as well as slower than usual refresh inputs. This will greatly improve the reliability of the system protected by this new design.
Keywords :
failure analysis; fault diagnosis; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit reliability; microcontrollers; timing circuits; failure detection; microcontroller failure; microcontroller-based systems; refresh input rate; refresh inputs; system reliability; watchdog circuit; watchdog circuit design; watchdog timers; Circuit faults; Computer science; Fault detection; Hardware; Microcontrollers; Protection; Pulse circuits; Redundancy; Software performance; Telecommunications;
Conference_Titel :
Microelectronics, 1999. ICM '99. The Eleventh International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-6643-3
DOI :
10.1109/ICM.2000.884831
