Research Article On the Use of an Algebraic Signature Analyzer for Mixed-Signal Systems Testing Vadim Geurkov and Lev Kirischian Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M5B 2K3 Correspondence should be addressed to Vadim Geurkov; vgeurkov@ee.ryerson.ca Received 31 May 2014; Revised 17 October 2014; Accepted 21 October 2014; Published 16 November 2014 Academic Editor: M. Renovell Copyright © 2014 V. Geurkov and L. Kirischian. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We propose an approach to design of an algebraic signature analyzer that can be used for mixed-signal systems testing. he analyzer does not contain carry propagating circuitry, which improves its performance as well as fault tolerance. he common design technique of a signature analyzer for mixed-signal systems is based on the rules of an arithmetic inite ield. he application of this technique to the systems with an arbitrary radix is a challenging task and the devices designed possess high hardware complexity. he proposed technique is simple and applicable to systems of any size and radix. he hardware complexity is low. he technique can also be used in arithmetic/algebraic coding and cryptography. 1. Introduction Signature analysis has been widely used for digital and mixed- signal systems testing [1–12]. Mixed-signal systems consist of both digital and analog circuits; however the signature anal- ysis method is only applicable to the subset of these systems that have digital outputs (such as analog-to-digital converters, measurement instruments, etc.). Signature analysis can be employed as an external test solution or can be embedded into the system under test. In the built-in implementation, a circuit under test (CUT) of digital or mixed-signal nature is fed by test stimuli, while the output responses are compacted by a signature analyzer (SA), as illustrated in Figure 1. he actual signature is compared against the fault-free circuit’s signature and a pass/fail decision is made. A signature of a fault-free circuit is referred to as a reference signature. If the CUT is of a digital nature, the SA essentially constitutes a circuit that computes an algebraic remainder. he reference signature has only one, punctual value, and the decision making circuit consists of a simple digital comparator. If the CUT is of a mixed-signal nature, the SA computes an arithmetic residue. In this case, the reference signature becomes an interval value and the decision making circuit uses a window comparator. Design methods for an algebraic signature analyzer have been well developed in error-control coding [13]. A remainder calculating circuit for an arbitrary base (binary or nonbinary) can be readily designed for a digital CUT of any size. In contrast, it is much harder to design a residue calculating circuit, speciically for a nonbinary base [14]. Fur- thermore, due to the presence of carry propagating circuitry, the implementation complexity and error vulnerability of the residue calculating circuit are higher compared to the remainder calculating circuit. We propose an approach to design of an algebraic sig- nature analyzer that can be used for mixed-signal systems testing. Due to an algebraic nature, the analyzer does not contain carry propagating circuitry. his helps to improve its error immunity, as well as performance. 2. A Conventional Signature Analyzer An algebraic signature analyzer is designed on the basis of a polynomial division circuit, as shown in Figure 2 [3, 13, 15]. his circuit divides the incoming sequence of nonbinary symbols (digits),  −1 ,..., 1 , 0 , treated as a polynomial: ()= −1  −1 +⋅⋅⋅+ 1 + 0 (1) Hindawi Publishing Corporation VLSI Design Volume 2014, Article ID 465907, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/465907