Title
Design and DCVS implementation of a self-checking bus-monitor unit for highly reliable fault-tolerant system configurations
Abstract
In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a bus-monitor unit targeted for the design of highly reliable fault-tolerant systems. The bus-monitor is designed using Differential Cascode Voltage Switch (DCVS) logic, whose inherent characteristics result in self-checking circuits. It is implemented in an Application Specific Integrated Circuit that can be used to implement a variety of fault-tolerant architectures including Triple Modular Redundant and Hybrid configurations. The unit is capable of detecting and correcting failures in the redundant modules by monitoring their respective buses, and it delivers fault-free data to the destination modules. The unit is also capable of detecting faults occurring in the unit itself by utilizing the fault secure properties of DCVS logic. In this paper, we present the operation of the bus-monitor unit and we describe its DCVS design and implementation, as well as the performance characteristics of the prototype chips. Finally, we illustrate how the bus-monitor unit(s) can be used to implement highly reliable fault-tolerant architectures, and we demonstrate that architectures designed using the developed unit(s) exhibit higher reliability compared to the ones implemented with CMOS logic, using the same number of computational resources.
Year
DOI
Venue
1994
10.1109/92.285742
IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst.
Keywords
DocType
Volume
CMOS integrated circuits,application specific integrated circuits,circuit reliability,integrated logic circuits,logic design,logic testing,DCVS design,DCVS implementation,DCVS logic,bus-monitor unit,buses,destination modules,differential cascode voltage switch logic,fault detection,fault secure properties,fault-free data,fault-tolerant architectures,highly reliable fault-tolerant architectures,highly reliable fault-tolerant system configurations,performance characteristics,redundant modules,reliability,self-checking bus-monitor unit,self-checking circuits,triple modular redundant configurations
Journal
2
Issue
Citations 
PageRank 
2
1
0.39
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tassos Markas1378.02
D. Mark Royals210.39
Nick Kanopoulos33412.44