FASTNR: an Efficient Fault Simulator for Linear and Nonlinear DC Circuits

In this paper we describe the simulator FASTNR (FAST Newton-Raphson) where an efficient methodology for solving the faulty circuit equations, called FAult RUBber Stamps (FARUBS), is implemented. Its application to single fault simulation in linear and nonlinear circuits is reported. The efficient fault simulation in nonlinear DC circuits is due both to the development of original linearized Newton-Raphson models for electronic devices and to the simulation of fault values in a “continuation” stream. Fault simulation in linear cascades with up to 5000 nodes has shown an improvement of four orders of magnitude in simulation time, when compared to that of the nominal circuit. In nonlinear circuits, the time efficiency is sometimes better than two orders of magnitude.