A prototype test-engineering workstation for analog electronics

The authors present a prototype workstation software package for aiding the development of diagnostic capabilities for analog and hybrid electronic circuits. The software centers around assessment of the effects of failures on circuit behavior under specified stimuli or test conditions. These assessments are made through electrical simulation of both nominal and faulty circuit behavior. From the results of these simulations, several algorithms can be used to analyze the effectiveness of candidate test sets. These algorithms provide details and summaries of fault isolation ambiguity groups, redundant test sets, and, if desired, an automatically generated fault diagnostic flow chart. Figures of merit associated with the diagnostic flow chart (such as mean time to isolate) are computed