The largest single effort associated with a testability analysis is the creation or modeling of tests This paper presents a methodology, referred to as Test Synthesis, that automates the process of creating a set of tests that are suitable for performing a testability analysis and developing an initial test strategy In the context of this paper, a test is defined as: "The acquisition or definition of data that leads to the detection of one or more faults" Test Synthesis combines topological data with testability models to create a comprehensive set of tests with minimal user input

Test synthesis: an innovative approach to analog and system testability analysis using state dependent flow diagrams

A method and apparatus for evaluating an integrated circuit design to determine whether elements in the integrated circuit are feedback elements. The apparatus comprises a computer capable of being configured to execute a rules checker program which analyzes information relating to the integrated circuit to determine whether or not an element being evaluated is a feedback element. The rules checker program preferably performs a first routine that determines whether an element being evaluated is a feedback element in a special type of circuit. If the first routine determines that it has not detected the special type of circuit, or special case, the rules checker program begins executing a second routine. If the first routine determines that it has detected a special case, the routine ends. The second routine performs several checks to determine whether or not an element being evaluated is a feedback element. The first and second routines are designed to ensure that the order of the checks maximize efficiency in the manner in which the rules checking task is performed, although the invention is not limited to the particular order.

Method and apparatus for determining whether an element in an integrated circuit is a feedback element

The development of supportability techniques and tools which keep pace with mission equipment technology is essential to minimize long term maintenance costs. The DoD's solution is the use of an integrated diagnostic (ID) process. An integral part of MDA's plan to implement ID is the use of automated tools to effectively assess diagnostic capabilities during the design process. The development and implementation of a procedure to effectively diagnose an item of mission equipment involves several analyses performed during various phases of the equipment development. A mixture of automated tools and manual methods are currently used to perform these analyses. The effort required to perform these diagnostic analyses can be significantly reduced and the quality of the analyses can be significantly improved by developing an automated method of implementing those portions of the analysis which are currently performed manually. Additional improvements can be realized by integrating those automated tools, utilized separately to perform each analysis, into a unified tool set operating on a common set of design data. >

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel2/3048/8644/00381564.pdf

Creating a diagnostic engineering tool set

Increasing avionic design complexities and diagnostic requirements have focused attention on the need for performing a testability analysis early in the design cycle. The author describes the general principles underlying the testability analysis of analog circuits and systems performed by the automated testability expert system tool (AutoTEST) which is an artificial intelligence (AI) based CAE tool. The goal is to perform a testability analysis early in the design cycle to ensure conformance with diagnostic requirements. To meet this goal, AutoTEST was designed to perform an analysis with varying levels of component and circuit detail. AutoTEST supports both a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The analog and system level portions of AutoTEST provide test and design engineers with both quantitative measures and qualitative descriptions of the testability of a given design. Quantitative measures are testability figures of merit such as fraction of faults detected, fault isolation resolution, and average ambiguity group size. Qualitative descriptions of testability problems include identifying feedback loops and unique circuit configurations which are difficult to test. The qualitative analysis consists of a set of design rules that are applied to the circuit. At the completion of an AutoTEST session, selected analysis results are written to a set of report files. >

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel2/653/6713/00270110.pdf

F. Kuhns

Papers

Automating testability analysis of analog circuits and systems