Fault diagnosis of a logical circuit by use of input grouping method

The authors have already proposed a method for grouping of inputs of a logical circuit under test (LCUT) by use of M-sequence correlation. We call this method as input grouping (IG) method. In this paper, the authors propose a new method to estimate the faulty part in the circuit by use of IG when some information on the candidate of faulty part can be obtained beforehand. The relationship between IG and fault probabilities of a LCUT, and undetected fault ratios are investigated for various cases. Especially the investigation was made in case where the IG was calculated by use of n correlation functions (I $G_{inp}$). From the theoretical study and simulation results it is shown that the estimation error ratio of fault probabilities and undetected fault ratio of LCUT are sufficiently small even when only a part of correlation functions are used. It is shown that the number of correlation functions which are to be memorized to calculate IG can be considerably reducible from 2$^{n}$ - 1 to n by use of I $G_{inp}$. So this method would be very useful for a fault diagnosis of actual logic circuit.uit.