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343764

Digital Testing of Analog Circuits

Article

Last updated: 24 Dec 2024

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Tags

Communication Engineering

Abstract

This research exploits digital techniques to test analog circuits. A novel test methodology and an optimization algorithm to generate the stimulus have been developed. The aim is to detect as many manufacturing defects as possible, which might occur during the production process of mixed-signal systems. The test stimulus is a discrete-interval binary sequence identified by the optimiza-tion algorithm. Response from the analog circuit under test (CUT) is digitized with one-bit resolution by a comparator. Digitized responses from the actual circuit and from fault-free simulation are compared for fault recognition. A fig-ure-of-merit, to measure the ability of a specified binary sequence to detect all possible faults, is defined. Input sequences with good performance will generally be too long to permit exhaustive search of all candidates. Instead, iterative op-timization is employed. An optimum sequence has been discovered when no further modification can improve the figure-of-merit. This process of optimiza-tion is performed with computer-based simulation of the circuit under test. Consequently, faults and tolerances can be introduced as required and all as-pects of behavior can be modelled under controlled conditions. The digitized response of the optimum sequence is stored to be used in actual test application. The methodology has been validated using analog filter. All catastrophic and parametric (deviations of component values from nominal by more than six times the normal tolerances) failures can be detected, with detection probability greater than 98%. Benefits of the methodology include ease of introducing bi-nary signals to analog subsystems and reduction of the hardware required for both stimulus generation and response processing.

DOI

10.21608/fuje.2024.343764

Keywords

Analog testing, Analog test stimulus, Binary sequences, Digital testing, Fault Detection, Hamming Distance, Mixed analog–digital integrated circuits, Optimization of Binary sequences, Testing

Authors

First Name

Mahmoud

Last Name

Moussa

MiddleName

A.

Affiliation

Giza Engineering Institute, Tammoh

Email

dr_mahmoud_moussa@yahoo.com

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Atef

Last Name

Salama

MiddleName

L.

Affiliation

Giza Engineering Institute, Tammoh

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

7

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

46380

Issue Date

2024-03-01

Receive Date

2024-03-01

Publish Date

2024-03-01

Page Start

45

Page End

52

Print ISSN

2537-0626

Online ISSN

2537-0634

Link

https://fuje.journals.ekb.eg/article_343764.html

Detail API

https://fuje.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=343764

Order

343,764

Type

Original Article

Type Code

651

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Fayoum University Journal of Engineering

Publication Link

https://fuje.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Digital Testing of Analog Circuits

Details

Type

Article

Created At

24 Dec 2024