A Case Study of Self-Checking Circuits Reliability

In this paper, we analyze the reliability of self-checking circuits. A case study is presentedin which a fault-tolerant system with duplicated self-checking modules is comparedto the TMR version. It is shown that a duplicated self-checking system has a much higherreliability than that of the TMR counterpart. More importantly, the reliability of the self-checkingsystem does not drop as sharply as that of the TMR version. We alsodemonstrate the trade-offs between hardware complexity and error handling capabilityof self-checking circuits. Alternative self-checking designs where some hardwareredundancies are removed with the lost of fault-secure and/or self-testing propertiesare also studied