Testing of differential cascade voltage switch (DCVS) circuits

Author

Kanopoulos, Nick ; Vasanthavada, N.

Author_Institution

Res. Triangle Inst., Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

Volume

25

Issue

3

fYear

1990

fDate

6/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

806

Lastpage

813

Abstract

The problem of testing differential cascode voltage switch (DCVS) circuits is analyzed. These circuits have several potential applications in fault-tolerant, highly available system design due to their inherent self-checking capability. It is shown how concurrent (online) testing of DCVS circuits, which is very effective under single transistor fault assumptions, can be performed. The impact of multiple faults of DCVS circuits is examined, and analytical results are derived. These results indicate that periodic offline tests on DCVS circuits are necessary in order to achieve high multiple-fault coverage. Single-fault test sets and/or pseudorandom vectors were successfully used in the offline tests to detect many of the multiple faults which reduce the efficiency of online tests. The results show the need for a comprehensive mixed-test strategy combining offline and online tests for DCVS circuits

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; fault location; integrated logic circuits; logic testing; DCVS circuits; concurrent testing; differential cascade voltage switch; mixed-test strategy; multiple faults; offline tests; online tests; periodic offline tests; pseudorandom vectors; self-checking capability; single fault test sets; single transistor fault assumptions; Circuit analysis; Circuit faults; Circuit testing; Electrical fault detection; Fault detection; Fault tolerant systems; Performance evaluation; Switches; Switching circuits; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.102679

Filename

102679