Ultra low-cost configurability test strategy for an embedded analog circuit

This paper proposes a configurable test strategy for an embedded analog configurable circuit (EACC) composed by operational amplifiers and interconnection resources that are present in the MSP430 microcontroller family from Texas Instruments^®. The test strategy is particularly useful for in-field application requiring reliability, safe operation or fault tolerance characteristics. The strategy minimizes the cost in hardware overhead by employing only the hardware and software resources of the microcontroller. Our test proposal consists in programming all EACC configurations and testing its functionality by measuring only a few parameters. The processor executes an embedded test routine that sequentially programs the configurations, acquires data from an ADC channel and performs required calculations. The test strategy is experimentally evaluated using commercial hardware provided by the vendor. Our experimental results show very good repeatability, with errors below the expected.