Automatic test generation techniques for analog circuits and systems - A review

The purpose of this paper is both a review and an assessment of techniques presently available for automatic test generation for analog systems. After recalling the general problems of automatic testing (definitions, faults in analog systems, different types of tests, main operations, and diagnosis procedures), characterization and description modes of analog systems, and the main software ingredients of automatic test equipment, a categorization of known techniques along several criteria can be proposed. Then, several techniques, respectively, proceeding from approaches based on deterministic and probabilistic estimation, taxonomical and topological analyses can be detailed. Techniques specific to linear systems (several of them belonging to the above three categories) are dealt with in a separate section. As a conclusion, several research areas that need further investigation in view of a possible industrial implementation of automatic analog test generation techniques are identified. Two appendixes deal briefly with fault tolerance and fault simulation in analog systems.