A Tutorial Introduction to Research on Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuit Testing

Traditionally, work on analog testing has focused on diagnosing faults in board designs. Recently, with increasing levels of integration, not just diagnosing faults, but distinguishing between faulty and good circuits has become a problem. Analog blocks embedded in digital systems may not easily be separately testable. Consequently, many papers have been recently written proposing techniques to reduce the burden of testing analog and mixed-signal circuits. This survey attempts to outline some of this recent work, ranging from tools for simulation-based test set development and optimization to built-in self-test (BIST) circuitry.