Flip-Flop Selection for Transition Test Pattern Reduction Using Partial Enhanced Scan

Abstract

Enhanced scan delay testing approach can achieve high transition delay fault coverage by a small size of test pattern set but with significant hardware overhead. Although the implementation cost of launch on capture (LOC) approach is relatively low, the generated pattern set for testing delay faults is typically very large. In this paper, we present a novel flip-flop selection method to combine the respective advantages of the two approaches, by replacing a small number of selected regular scan cells with enhanced scan cells, thus to reduce the overall volume of transition delay test patterns effectively. Moreover, higher fault coverage can also be obtained by this approach compared to the standard LOC approach. Experimental results on larger ISCAS-89 and ITC-99 benchmark circuits using a commercial test generation tool show that the volume of test patterns can be reduced by over 70% and the transition delay fault coverage can be improved by up to 8.7%.