Specification back-propagation and its application to DC fault simulation for analog/mixed-signal circuits

In this paper we present the specification backpropagation technique which enables one to derive the constraint of an internal functional block with respect to a given DC specification for an analog/mixed-signal system. Based on this technique, we implement an efficient fault simulator which reduces the required efforts by (1) removing undetectable faults from the fault list, and (2) performing fault simulation only locally for the fault block. Simulation results on an industrial design show a speedup factor of 7.2 with 98% correct classification of detected and undetected faults as compared with full-chip DC fault simulation.