In avionics, like glide computers, the problem of No Faults Found (NFF) is a very serious and extremely costly affair. The rare occurrences and short bursts of these faults are the most difficult ones to detect and diagnose in the testing arena. Several techniques are now being developed in ICs by us to cope with one particular category of NFFs, being intermittent resistive faults (IRF). The reuse of these (on-chip) embedded instruments for detection of these faults at the board-level is being investigated in conjunction with the possibilities of enhancing the (mixed-signal) boundary-scan standard IEEE 1149.4. This paper will explore how this can be accomplished.
Keywords— Reliability, Dependability, Mixed-Signal test, Boundary-Scan, IEEE 1149.4, No Faults Found, Intermittent Resistive Faults, Evoking & Detection of faults