Multiple soft fault diagnosis of analog circuits using restart homotopy method

Abstract

This paper offers a method for multiple soft fault diagnosis of nonlinear circuits containing bipolar and MOS transistors. The method enables us to locate faulty elements and evaluate their parameters, using a nonlinear algebraic type test equation which may possess several solutions. To find the solutions the homotopy concept is applied and a homotopy differential equation written. Next the terminal value problem is formulated and solved using the restart approach. A numerical example illustrates the proposed approach.