Circuit Level Concurrent Error Detection in FSMs

Finite state machines (FSMs) are contained in many building blocks of digital electronic circuits. Such electronic circuits are prone to transient errors, caused e.g. by cosmic radiation, and to permanent errors. In this article, the authors give an overview of known error detection methods for FSMs. One method (dependent state encoding for dynamic error detection) is described in detail, as well as the problems arising when the method is applied to a practical example. Additionally, the authors propose a modification of the method above. For several benchmark circuits, this modification shows better results, compared to the state-of-the-art implementation.