On potential fault detection in sequential circuits

During fault simulation, an approximation frequently used in practice is to declare a fault to be detected after it has been potentially detected a predetermined number of times. This approximation may lead to declaring a fault detected when in fact the fault will not be detected during a standard test application process. We propose an alternative measure of fault detection for potentially detected faults, that is easy to compute, yet its accuracy is significantly higher than the measure based on the number of times a fault is potentially detected. Experimental results are shown to support the accuracy of the new measure.