Fault detection for multiple-valued logic circuits with fanout-free

Abstract

The single fault and multiple fault detections for multiple-valued logic circuits are studied in this paper. Firstly, it is shown that the cardinality of optimal single fault test set for fanout-free m-valued circuits with n primary inputs is not more than n+1, for linear tree circuits is two, and for multiplication modulo circuits is two if n is an odd number or if n is an even number and m>3, where the optimal test set of a circuit has minimal number of test vectors. Secondly, it is indicated that the cardinality of optimal multiple fault test set for linear tree circuits with n primary inputs is 1+[n/(m−1)], for multiplication modulo circuits is n+1, for fanout-free circuits that consist of 2-input linear tree circuits and 2-input multiplication modulo circuits is not greater than n+1, where [x] denotes the smallest integer greater than or equal to x. Finally, the single fault location approaches of linear tree circuits and multiplication modulo circuits are presented, and all faults in the two types of circuits can be located by using a test set with n+1 vectors.