Assessing and comparing fault coverage when testing analogue circuits

A new technique for calculating fault coverage when testing analogue circuits is presented. The fault models employed for individual circuit components relate to the importance of those components to overall circuit functionality and therefore permit benchmark assessments and comparisons of fault coverage for different devices, test techniques and test programs. The application of this principle to a simple analogue circuit is demonstrated and the fault coverage obtained, as a function of the detection threshold, employed to differentiate between faulty and fault-free circuit responses, is presented