Multiple fault diagnosis in combinational networks

Prime faults are introduced for the study of multiple fault diagnosis in combinational circuits. It is shown that every multiple fault in a network can be represented by a functionally equivalent fault with prime faults as its only components. Masking and covering relations among faults are defined and used to significantly simplify multiple fault analysis and test generation. An efficient algorithm that generates a multiple fault detection test set and identifies any redundancy is presented. Suggestions for designing networks to yield a minimum number of tests in the multiple fault detection test set are included