Diagnosis from within the system [built-in test]

There has been an increasing need for technologies to better monitor the condition of their complex products and systems from the design stage, through manufacturing, to their applications. Better condition monitoring enables better quality control, which is essential for economical, environmental, availability, and safety reasons. One way to achieve such a goal is using built-in-test (BIT), which incorporates test and diagnostic functionality into a component´s structure at the design stage. A system with BIT is characterized by the ability to identify operational conditions by itself, through the built-in diagnostic capabilities. Such a design philosophy has been widely applied to the design and testing of complex, mixed-signal electronic systems, such as ICs and multifunction instrumentation. Various techniques have been developed over the past three decades to implement BIT in industry, especially in semiconductors, manufacturing processes, aerospace, and transportation (Bardell and Mcanney, 1988; Baker et al., 1990; Cox et al., 1999). This article looks at BIT implementation in the IC industry, manufacturing, and the automobile industry, along with the future prospects of this technique