A novel cell mutual detection method for bio-inspired electronic array

Bio-inspired electronic arrays (BIEAs) are circuits that consist of electronic cells. Their self-repairing ability results in high reliability, which brings them many potential demands in aviation field. Recent developments on self-organization and self-repairing methods of BIEA have led to a demand for fault detection as it is the premise of self-repairing. However, the conventional fault detection methods like redundancy and built-in test are not suitable for BIEAs. The hardware consumption of redundancy method is considerably high, and the structure of built-in test is too complex with a large hardware consumption as well. To solve this problem, a fault detection method based on cell mutual detection is proposed in this paper. Referring to the stuck-at-fault errors that usually occur in aviation electronic devices, the method takes the advantage of the features that all the components of the cells are the same. The test vectors are input into all the cells simultaneously through bus and the outputs of each cell are connected to some comparators. The outputs of these comparators are connected to cells as feedback through AND gates that can distinct the faulty cells. In this way, the function of cell mutual detection is fulfilled. A simulation experiment based on FIR filter has been done to validate the feasibility of this method.