Built-in generation of m-sequences with irreducible characteristic polynomials

Abstract

In this paper, we show that m-sequences for built in test pattern generation (TPG) can be efficiently generated by LFSR structures that have non-primitive irreducible characteristic polynomials. We present two mechanisms that can generate the required number of seeds with very low hardware overhead that is independent of the number of seeds. This enhances the choices available for the design of appropriate TPG structures for pseudo-exhaustive or pseudo-random TPG that were previously limited to primitive characteristic polynomials only.