Inadmissible Class of Boolean Functions under Stuck-at Faults

Many underlying structural and functional factors that determine the fault behavior of a combinational network, are not yet fully understood. In this paper, we show that there exists a large class of Boolean functions, called root functions, which can never appear as faulty response in irredundant two-level circuits even when any arbitrary multiple stuck-at faults are injected. Conversely, we show that any other Boolean function can appear as a faulty response from an irredundant realization of some root function under certain stuck-at faults. We characterize this new class of functions and show that for n variables, their number is exactly equal to the number of independent dominating sets (Harary and Livingston, Appl. Math. Lett., 1993) in a Boolean n-cube. We report some bounds and enumerate the total number of root functions up to 6 variables. Finally, we point out several open problems and possible applications of root functions in logic design and testing

EVMDD-Based Analysis and Diagnosis Methods of Multi-State Systems with Multi-State Components *

A multi-state system with multi-state components is a model of systems, where performance, capacity, or reliability levels of the systems are represented as states. It usually has more than two states, and thus can be considered as a multi-valued function, called a structure function. Since many structure functions are monotone increasing, their multi-state systems can be represented compactly by edge-valued multivalued decision diagrams (EVMDDs). This paper presents an analysis method of multi-state systems with multi-state components using EVMDDs. Experimental results show that, by using EVMDDs, structure functions can be represented more compactly than existing methods using ordinary MDDs. Further, EVMDDs yield comparable computation time for system analysis. This paper also proposes a new diagnosis method using EVMDDs, and shows that the proposed method can infer the most probable causes for system failures more efficiently than conventional methods based on Bayesian networks

Complexities of graph-based representations for elementary functions

This paper analyzes complexities of decision diagrams for elementary functions such as polynomial, trigonometric, logarithmic, square root, and reciprocal functions. These real functions are converted into integer-valued functions by using fixed-point representation. This paper presents the numbers of nodes in decision diagrams representing the integer-valued functions. First, complexities of decision diagrams for polynomial functions are analyzed, since elementary functions can be approximated by polynomial functions. A theoretical analysis shows that binary moment diagrams (BMDs) have low complexity for polynomial functions. Second, this paper analyzes complexity of edge-valued binary decision diagrams (EVBDDs) for monotone functions, since many common elementary functions are monotone. It introduces a new class of integer functions, Mp-monotone increasing function, and derives an upper bound on the number of nodes in an EVBDD for the Mp-monotone increasing function. A theoretical analysis shows that EVBDDs have low complexity for Mp-monotone increasing functions. This paper also presents the exact number of nodes in the smallest EVBDD for the n-bit multiplier function, and a variable order for the smallest EVBDD