Fault simulation based test generation for combinational circuits using dynamically selected subcircuits

We propose a fault simulation based method to generate test patterns that achieve high fault coverages for combinational circuits. Due to the use of fault simulation, the proposed method is scalable and can be applied to large designs. The unique feature of the proposed method is that it uses a dynamic circuit partitioning scheme. Under this scheme, test patterns are generated so as to activate and propagate faults within specific subcircuits. The circuit is first partitioned statically. If it turns out that certain areas of the circuit still contain undetected faults, additional sub-circuits are added to the originally selected ones in order to better cover these areas. We present experimental results using stuck-at faults and bridging faults as the fault model driving the dynamic partitioning scheme.