Fault Detection Capabilities of Alternating Logic

This paper details the fault detection capability of a design technique named "alternating logic design." The technique achieves its fault detection capability by utilizing a redundancy in time instead of the conventional redundancy in space and is based on the successive execution of a required function and its dual. In combinational networks the method involves the utilization of a self-dual fumction to represent the required function and the realization of the self dual function in a network with structral properties which are sufficient to guarantee the detection of all single faults. One network structure with sufficient structral properties to detect all single stuck-line faults is the standard AND/OR or OR/AND two-level network [1]. However, other more general combinational logic structures also possess sufficient structural properties. Necessary and sufficient structural properties for any alternating network to be capable of detecting all single faults are derived.