Configurable Built-In Self-Test Architecture for Automated Testing of a Dual-Axis Solar Tracker

This paper presents two manually configurable test architectures, which, due to their compact design and restructuring capabilities, allow for facile deployment in today’s automation systems. First, we propose three modified D-type Flip- Flops (DFFs) that, once chained, can act as a Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) unit or a Multiple Input Signature Register (MISR) unit. Secondly, we propose a novel and efficient implementation of a Configurable Built-In-Self-Test (CBIST) architecture for component testing of a dual-axis solar tracking system. A test engineer may control the adapted Shift Register, including multiple switch modules connected to each of the hardware’s XOR gates. The partially configurable Output Response Analyzer (ORA) modifies the generator polynomial form in real-time, based on the mathematical expressions of the burst errors observed by a dedicated Watchdog Unit, thereby improving the fault coverage by 11.013% over state-of-the-art BIST architectures. The experimental cases, which were run on a Spartan-7 SP701 FPGA Evaluation Kit and in the C++ software environment, show an average fault coverage of 82.05%, an average execution time of 10.5 seconds, and energy consumption of 0.082 Wh.