Detecting and locating electrical shorts using group testing

Consideration is given to the problem of detecting and locating electrical shorts among a set of nets using an apparatus which, when connected to two groups of nets, can detect, but not locate, the presence of a short between them. This problem was previously considered by J.K. Skilling and a clever method was patented by him (US Patent 4 342 959, Aug. 1982). The authors relate this short-locating problem to the well-studied group-testing problem and borrow some results from there to devise a procedure for the former. They show that the resulting procedure compares favorably with Skilling´s method. They also consider the case in which one of the two groups of nets being tested is restricted in size, as is true in many practical applications