Strongly Fault-Secure and Strongly Self-Checking Domino-CMOS Implementations of Totally Self-Checking Circuits

The totally self-checking (TSC) concept is well established for applications in the area of on-line error-indication. TSC circuits can detect both transient and permanent faults. They consist of a functional circuit with encoded inputs and outputs and a checker which monitors these outputs. The TSC concept can be generalized for the functional circuits using the strongly fault-secure (SFS) concept. In this paper we introduce the concept of strongly self-checking (SSC) circuits which is a generalization from TSC circuits. Most of the TSC circuits presented in the literature are designed at the logic gate level using the stuck-at fault model. However, this fault model is inadequate for MOS technologies. In this paper we show that a TSC gate-level functional circuit can be implemented in the domino-CMOS technology as an SFS circuit, while a TSC gate-level checker can be implemented as an SSC checker. For the domino-CMOS implementation we enlarge the fault model to stuck-at, stuck-open, and stuck-on faults. We show that domino-CMOS is much more suitable for implementation of self-checking circuits than static CMOS.