Predicting and eliminating built-in test false alarms

Author

Rosenthal, Daniel ; Wadell, Brain C.

Author_Institution

Teradyne Inc., Boston, MA, USA

Volume

39

Issue

4

fYear

1990

fDate

10/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

500

Lastpage

505

Abstract

Failures detected by built-in test equipment (BITE) occur because a BITE measurement noise or bias as well as actual hardware failures. A quantitative approach is proposed for setting built-in test (BIT) measurement limits and this method is applied to the specific case of a constant failure rate system whose BITE measurements are corrupted by Gaussian noise. Guidelines for setting BIT measurement limits are presented for a range of system MTBF (mean time between failures) times and BIT run times. The technique was applied to a BIT for an analog VLSI test system with excellent results, showing it to be a powerful tool for predicting tests with the potential for false alarms. It was discovered that, for this test case, false alarms are avoidable

Keywords

VLSI; analogue circuits; built-in self test; integrated circuit testing; linear integrated circuits; BITE measurements; Gaussian noise; analog VLSI test system; built-in test false alarms; constant failure rate system; mean time between failures; Built-in self-test; Circuit testing; Hardware; Instruments; Integrated circuit measurements; Integrated circuit noise; Manufacturing; Noise measurement; Printed circuits; System testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Reliability, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9529

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/24.58728

Filename

58728