On-line detection of random voltage perturbations in buses with multiple-threshold receivers

Abstract

Random voltage changes on bus lines may lead to reading corrupted digital data. A novel methodology for detecting such anomalies is proposed. It uses multiple threshold voltages at the receiver-end. In our earlier work we have shown that multiple voltage thresholds improve the performance along buses, especially when they are coupled as is often the case in deepsubmicron. This work shows that multiple thresholds can also be used to identify voltage perturbations on-line. The mechanism is presented assuming that each line can have only one aggressor. The efficiency of the methodology is evaluated for perturbations in single and multiple receiving nodes of a data bus.