Embedded wire diagnosis sensor for intermittent fault location

This paper presents an EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) compliant sensor able to detect and locate intermittent faults longer than 300 μs in wires in real time. The proposed System On Chip can diagnose any wire using different reflectometry-based methods. The injected signal's spectrum is designed to ensure a continuous harmless diagnosis. The ASIC integrates the whole processing chain, i.e. the analog cells, in particular ADC/DAC, and the digital processing elements based on a custom processing unit (DSP-like) that analyzes in real time the reflected signal. An integrated oversampling system increases the ADC performance more than 20 times, enhancing the location accuracy down to 3 cm. The ASIC was realized in 130 nm TSMC technology and has a surface of 3 mm2. This paper presents intermittent fault detection and location results in a real network.