A diagnosis method of analog parts of mixed-signal systems controlled by microcontrollers

A new class of K-D fault diagnosis methods of analog parts in embedded mixed-signal microsystems based on microcontrollers is presented. The methods consist of three stages: a pre-testing stage of a fault dictionary creation, a measurement stage based on the measurement of voltage samples of the time response on a stimulating square impulse of the analog part realized by internal resources of the microcontroller and a fault detection and localization stage performed by the microcontroller. The fault dictionary in the form of identification curves in the K-dimensional space is converted and placed in the program memory of the microcontroller. These methods have the following advantages: measurements of analog parts can be made using only internal resources of popular microcontrollers, the diagnosis procedure does not require big computing power and the codes of its procedure with the fault dictionary do not occupy much space in the program memory of the microcontroller. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.