Detection and location for single faults in bitonic sorters

Bitonic sorters have previously been adopted to construct along with banyan networks the switching fabrics of future broadband networks. Unfortunately, a single fault in the bitonic sorter may become a disaster to the switching system. Therefore, a bitonic sorter must be proved to be free of faults before it can be used. The authors present an efficient fault diagnosis procedure to detect and locate single faults in bitonic sorters without state control lines. The diagnosis procedure can detect most single faults in two tests. The faults which cannot be detected in two tests can always be detected in four tests. Several binary search techniques are developed to locate a faulty sorting element (i.e. 2×2 sorter.)