Concurrent detection of power supply noise

We propose a methodology for the concurrent detection of power supply noise affecting a general synchronous system and exceeding a tolerance bound to be chosen according to the system's constraints. Our solution is based on a suitable self-checking scheme which concurrently monitors a signal of the system clock distribution network and which is, by design, able to provide an output error message upon the occurrence of power supply noise. The produced error indication can then be exploited to recover from the detected noise (thus guaranteeing system's correct operation), or to accomplish diagnosis. Our scheme negligibly impacts system's performance, features self-checking ability with respect to a wide set of possible internal faults and keeps on revealing concurrently the occurrence of power supply noise, despite the possible presence of noise affecting also ground.

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