On the derivation of a minimum test set in high quality transition testing

Abstract

This paper discusses a test generation method to derive high quality transition tests for combinational circuits. It is known that, for a transition fault, a test set which propagates the errors (late transitions) to all the primary outputs reachable from the fault site can enhance the detectability of unmodeled defects. In this paper, to generate a minimum test set that meets the above property, the test generation problem is formulated as a problem of integer linear programming. The proposed formulation guarantees that minimum two-pattern tests for a transition fault are generated so that the errors will be observed at all the primary outputs reachable from the fault site. A case study using a benchmark circuit is presented to show the feasibility of the proposed method.