Implementing self-testing and self-repairable analog circuits on field programmable analog array platforms

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology and experiments on implementing self-healing analog circuits on a hardware platform that consists of microcontroller, flash memory, and a switched-capacitor based field programmable analog array (FPAA) device. By taking advantage of FPAA programmability and the availability of redundant resources, the microcontroller programs the FPAA circuit into different circuit configurations to perform online testing. The microcontroller also monitors the online testing data to determine if circuit faults occur. Once a circuit fault is detected, the FPAA circuit will be reconfigured to replace the faulty circuit block by a redundant resource to achieve self-healing. Experiments results are presented to show the effectiveness of the fault detection method and demonstrate the feasibility of self-healing operations.