A multi-step approach to the single fault diagnosis of DC-DC switched power converters

This paper presents a completely new technique developed to locate a single parametric fault in DC-DC power converters by means of time-domain measurements or simulations, following a rigorous approach. The technique is composed by three separated stages, a first one which evaluates testability and ambiguity groups of the Converter (or, more in general, the Circuit) Under Test (CUT), a second one which localizes the fault, classifying it in an appropriate Fault Class (FC) and a last one (optional) that can extract the value of the faulty component. The fabrication tolerances of the healthy components are taken into account at each stage of the method.