Fault coverage improvement of linear analogue circuits based on error signal analysis

Abstract

Fault-tolerant design of analogue circuits is more difficult than that of digital circuits. Only a few fault-tolerant schemes for analogue circuits have been published. The continuous checksum-based technique is a relatively new method for the design of fault-tolerant linear analogue circuits. It involves the use of an analogue checker to provide concurrent error detection. However, some faults in the passive elements cannot be detected if the checker has not been designed appropriately. This paper addresses the fault coverage issue in the continuous checksum-based technique and proposes an error signal analysis based method for improving fault coverage of the checker. An example is given to highlight the contributions of this paper.