Restoration-Based Merging of Functional Test Sequences.

This paper develops a merging procedure for functional test sequences that achieves test compaction for a pool of functional test sequences by reducing the number of sequences in the pool. The procedure has the following new features: 1) in contrast to existing selection procedures, the merging procedure described in this paper increases the fault coverage of test sequences in the pool, thus enhancing the ability to reduce the number of sequences and 2) in contrast to existing procedures that concatenate or merge test sequences, the procedure described in this paper does not increase the lengths of the sequences it merges. The procedure is based on the concept of restoration of test vectors. In the context of test sequence merging, restoration consists of copying test vectors from a test sequence Tj into a test sequence Ti in order to allow Ti to detect faults that Tj detects. The merging procedure focuses on the removal of one test sequence Tj at a time by restoring test vectors from Tj into other sequences, allowing them to detect the faults that Tj detects. Experimental results for benchmark circuits demonstrate that the procedure reduces the number of sequences in a pool significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]