DNA computing approach for automated test pattern generation for digital circuits

Abstract

Testing of digital circuits is a compute intensive problem. This article deals with the problem of automated test pattern generation for large digital circuits. A new evolutionary approach based on DNA computing is presented, which exploits the computational power of DNA molecules to solve the problem. A Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form is extracted from the circuit under test and then the proposed algorithm based on DNA computing is used to find the solution satisfying that formula. Exploiting the massive parallelism and recombination properties of DNA molecules, a test vector is found in polynomial time i.e., O (nk). Its effectiveness in terms of Fault coverage, CPU time and Test vector generated is compared with some existing classical approaches like simulated annealing and genetic algorithms.