A test points selection method for analog fault dictionary techniques

The problem of test point selection is important in the area of fault diagnosis and circuit testing. In this paper, the problem of near optimum test points set selection for analog fault dictionary is considered. This problem is formulated as a depth-first graph search problem. So the test points selection progress is transformed to a graph node expanding progress. The graph node construction method and node expanding procedure are given also. The proposed graph search method guarantee a maximum information increase of Sopt by adding a test point to Sopt each time, where Sopt is the desired test points set used on the path from current node to root node. So a global minimum test points set can be more likely achieved than other methods. The results of statistical experiments indicate that the proposed method more accurately finds the global minimum set of test points without increasing time complexity; therefore, it is a good solution to minimize the size of test points set.