Potentiality of Data Fusion in Analog Circuit Fault
Diagnosis
M. Parai1, K. Ghosh2, H. Rahaman3
School of VLSI Technology, Indian Institute of Engineering Science & Technology
Shibpur, Howrah, India
1
manasparai.rs2016@vlsi.iiests.ac.in
2
kasturighosh@rediffmail.com
3hafizur@vlsi.iiests.ac.in
Abstract— Features extracted from single domain information
cannot maximally reveal the state of the circuit since parametric
fault features of analog circuits are quantified according to the
application of the circuit. To combat this shortcoming, features
from time, frequency, wavelet and statistical domain have been
fused to construct ultimate fault features of the circuit. Data fusion
has been performed in two steps, data whitening and Principal
component analysis (PCA). The fused features are used to train
SVM classifier for fault diagnosis of analog circuits. The proposed
method is illustrated with the example of Sallen-Key band pass
filter circuit and four OpAmp biquad high pass filter circuit. The
accuracy of fault classification of the proposed method with fused
features is found considerably higher than that with individual
domain features.
Keywords— Analog filter, Fault diagnosis, Parametric fault,
Feature fusion, Principal component analysis, Support Vector
Machine
I. INTRODUCTION
Fault diagnosis in analog units of analog and mixed signal
integrated circuits is a burning problem in IC industries due to
poor fault model, tolerances and non-linear behaviour [1]-[18].
In recent past, machine learning based approaches have
contributed significant improvements in the field of analog
circuit fault diagnosis [2], [6], [9], [11]-18]. Two types of faults
are observed in analog circuits, catastrophic (hard) faults and
parametric (soft) faults. Catastrophic faults (mainly open and
short faults) are relatively easier to detect since a circuit with
catastrophic faults trends to malfunction. On the other hand,
parametric fault (defined as the deviation of
performance/functional parameters caused by deviation of
process parameters) are much harder to be detected [3]-[4], [6].
For parametric fault diagnosis, the behaviour/characteristics of
the circuit should be well known since parametric faults
features in analog circuits are quantified according to the
application of the circuits. The characteristics of the circuit can
be identified by extracting features from time and frequency
domain responses of the circuit. Thus, in last few decades,
different time and frequency domain features are used as pre-
processor to train the machine learning based fault classifier
like Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial neural network
(ANN), etc. and hence to classify the faults [6], [9], [11]-[16].
B. Log et al. reported analog circuit fault diagnosis based on
time domain features using LS-SVM [9] classifier. Diagnostics
978-1-7281-7467-9/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
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of analog filter circuits with the help of frequency domain
features was also proposed using the same classifier (LS-SVM)
[11]. Along with conventional time and frequency domain
features, hybrid features like energy features, statistical
property features, wavelet features are also used for analog
circuit fault diagnosis [8], [10], [12]-[16]. Song et al. used
statistical property features to train SVM classifier for fault
diagnosis in analog circuits [16]. Cui et al. showed the use of
wavelet transform coefficients as the trainer of SVM classifier
[17]. The method adopted by most of the researchers for analog
circuit fault diagnosis using machine learning as a tool is as
follows. Single type of feature is selected, the dimension of the
feature set is reduced by dimensionality reduction technique
like PCA and the classifier like SVM is trained using the feature
set with reduced dimension [15]-[16]. However, information
from single domain cannot maximally reveal the fault features
of a circuit and thus the fault diagnosis accuracy is not always
satisfactory [18]. Therefore, to improve the accuracy, it is
necessary to take into account wide range of information to
extract the fault features. However, PCA like dimensionality
reduction technique cannot be directly applied to the data set
which contains information from different domains. The
objective of the present work is to apply fusion of information
from multi-domain for fault diagnosis in analog circuit.
In this paper, time domain features, frequency domain
features, wavelet features (in terms of energy), statistical
features of the circuit have been fused to form the fault feature
set. The fused features are used to train SVM classifier for fault
diagnosis and testing. The proposed method is illustrated with
the example of second order Sallen-Key band pass filter and
four opamp biquad high pass filter.
II. METHODOLOGY
The flowchart of the proposed fault diagnosis method is shown
in Fig. 1. First, it is necessary to define the fault classes of the
CUT. In this work, single parametric faults are considered only.
Monte-Carlo simulation on the defined parametric fault classes
are performed for impulse response and frequency response.
Time-domain, wavelet-domain and statistical features are
extracted from impulse response. Frequency-domain features
are obtained from frequency response. Features from four
domains are fused with fusion algorithm. SVM is trained with
the fused features for classifying the fault. The accuracy of fault
classification of the proposed method is compared with the
methods where SVM is trained with individual domain features.
The considered kernel function of SVM is radial basis function
(RBF). In this work, SPICE simulations are performed to obtain
impulse response and frequency responses of the circuits and
the data extracted from the simulators are processed with
Matlab R2015a.
Fig. 1 Flow chart of the proposed fault diagnosis method
A. Feature Extraction
Features extracted from the impulse response and frequency
response of the circuits are enlisted below.
(i) Time domain features:
For both types of filters (Sallen-Key band pass filter and four
opamp biquad high pass filter), following time domain features
(as illustrated in Fig. 4) are extracted from impulse response of
the circuit: (a) signal value at the maximum of the impulse
response (TD1) (b) signal value at the minimum of the impulse
response TD2 (c) width of the impulse response (TD3), and (d)
time difference between maximum and minimum value of the
impulse response (TD4).
(ii) Wavelet domain features:
To extract wavelet features, the impulse response of the circuit
has been decomposed into eight frequency bands. The energy
of each frequency band is calculated as follows.
∑ (1)
where are the k-th wavelet coefficients, k=1,2,3,……7,8. m
is the sampling numbers [14]. The considered wavelet basis
function is dB4. The wavelet energy associated with each
frequency band construct the feature vector
, , , , , , , .
(iii) Statistical features:
The statistical features, which are considered in this work, are
moment (SF1), skewness (SF2), entropy (SF3), kurtosis (SF4),
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centroid (SF5). All statistical features are extracted from time
domain analysis i.e. impulse response of the circuit [16].
(iv) Frequency domain features:
Considered frequency domain features are different for Sallen-
Key band pass filter and four opamp biquad high pass filter
since their frequency responses are of different nature. For
Sallen-Key band pass filter, extracted features (as illustrated in
Fig. 5) are: (a) magnitude at central frequency (FD1) (b) central
frequency (FD2), (c) bandwidth (FD3) (d) phase at central
frequency (FD4).
For four opamp biquad high pass filter, the considered
frequency domain features (illustrated in Fig. 6) are: (a) pass
band gain (FD1), (b) -3dB cut off frequency (FD2), (c) pass
band ripple (FD3) (d) phase at maximum gain (FD4).
B. Fusion of Features
In this work, the collection of data sets of features from
different domain have been fused to obtain a single data set with
reduced total dimensionality which reflects most reliable
shared effects. Data fusion has been performed in two steps.
The first step is called data-whitening where within-data
correlations in each data set have been removed and the data
are scaled so that all dimensions have equal variance. Second
step is to capture the shared variation among the data sets by
applying PCA (Principal Component Analysis) on the column-
wise catenated whitened data set.
Let, Xk, a m x n matrix, is a collection of data set where xij
represents j-th feature of k-th domain for i-th value (obtained
by Monte-Carlo simulation) of particular circuit component.
The whitened version of the data matrix Xk is
(2)
where is the whitening matrix. According to Mahalnobis
or ZCA whitening,
/
(3)
where is the covariance matrix of Xk. In construction of ,
those components are neglected whose variance is less than 5%.
Let, Z is the collection of data set, such that
Z= , , , (since four types of features have been
extracted in this work). If CZ is the covariance matrix of Z, then,
Ʌ (4)
where V is an orthonormal matrix which contains the
eigenvectors and Ʌ is a diagonal matrix of projection variances.
Let, Vd corresponds to first d eigevectors with largest
eigenvalues. Projection of Z on Vd gives d number of principal
components,
(5)
where Pd is of size m x d (where d < n) and represents optimal
d dimensional feature vectors in term of shared variance.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed fault diagnosis method has been demonstrated
with two test circuits, Sallen-Key band pass filter and four
opamp biquad high pass filter, shown in Fig. 2 and 3
respectively. The nominal values of the circuit components are
mentioned in the figures.
 To obtain impulse response, time domain simulations of the The frequency response has been obtained for an AC signal of
circuits are performed with a single pulse of amplitude 5V and magnitude 5V and frequency sweep 0.1KHz – 100KHz. The
duration 10µS as input to the circuits. range of frequency sweep has been chosen so that most of the
frequency domain fault features can be extracted. Impulse
response of Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit with nominal
R2 component value is represented in Fig. 4. The time domain
Vin
R=3 k
Vout features, considered in this work have also been shown in
Figure 4. Frequency response of Sallen-Key band pass filter
R1 C2
R=1 k C=5 nf OP1 R6 10
GMax
GMax-3 dB
R3 R=10 k 5 FD 1

Gain (dB)
V C1 R=1 k 0
-3 dB FD 3

U2=5 V C=5 nf -5

R4 R5 -10
FD 2
R=4 k R=4 k 100

50

Phase (deg,)
0

-50
FD 4
Fig. 2 Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit -100

-150

3 4 5 6
10 10 10 10

Frequency (Hz)

Fig. 5 Frequency response of Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit with nominal
component value and identification of frequency domain features. FD1:
Magnitude at central frequency. FD2: Central frequency, FD3: Bandwidth.
FD4: Phase at central frequency.

circuit with nominal component value is shown in Fig. 5 where

considered frequency domain features are also marked. Fig. 6
represents frequency response of biquad high pass filter circuit
with nominal component value along with the identification of
corresponding frequency domain features.

24

16 FD 3

Pass band gain

Gain (dB)

8
FD 1
Fig. 3 Four opamp biquad high pass filter
0
-dB3
FD 2
3
TD1 -8

VMax 0
2

-50
TD3
Phase (deg,)

1 VMax/sqrt(2)
Vout (V)

-100

0
-150
FD 4

-1 10
3
10
4
10
5

Frequency (Hz)

-2
TD4 TD2
Fig. 6 Frequency response of four opamp biquad high pass filter circuit with
8x10
-5
10
-4
2x10
-4 nominal component value and identification of frequency domain features. FD1:
Time (s) Pass band gain, FD2: -3dB cut off frequency. FD3: Pass band ripple. FD4:
Phase at maximum gain.
Fig. 4 Impulse response of Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit with nominal
component value and identification of time domain features. Td1: Signal value Table I represents the value of the features from four domain
at the maximum of the impulse response. TD2: Signal value at the minimum of
the impulse response. TD3: Width of the impulse response. TD4: Time
for Sellen-Key band pass filter and biquad high pass filter for
difference between maximum and minimum value of the impulse response. their nominal component values. Table II represents considered

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fault classes of Sallen-Key band pass filter and biquad high pass Thus, F0 or no-fault class include values of ±5% than their
filter. Fault classes are selected according the sensitivity of the nominal values whereas the range is ±10% from nominal value
circuit components i.e. the rate of change of output features for capacitors. In this work, fault classes of resistors include
with the change in values of the circuit components. values 10%-50% lower and higher than their nominal values
TABLE I
whereas the range is 15%-50% for capacitors. 200 data sets are
FEATURE VECTORS OF FILTER CIRCUITS WITH NOMINAL COMPONENT VALUE generated for each fault class mentioned in Table II by Monte-
Carlo simulation. 50% of data set is used as training set for the
Domain Features Filter Circuits classifier and the rest 50% is the test set. Representative sets of
Sallen- Biquad Monte-Carlo simulation of impulse and frequency response for
Key Band High Pass the fault class F2 i.e. R2↓ of Sallen-Key band pass filter are
Pass Filter Filter shown in Figure 7 and 8, respectively.
TD1 (V) 2.87 2.53
Time TD2 (V) -1.83 -1.11
domain
TD3 (µs) 9.0 23.0
TD4 (µs) 11.0 51.0
E1 0.0003 0.0158
E2 0.0113 0.2453
E3 0.1315 0.7501
Wavelet E4 1.8410 2.2619
E5 2.3979 2.7681
E6 48.6961 27.7420
E7 34.9188 61.6171
E8 8.7873 5.8132
SF1 0.4654 -1.6302 Fig. 7 Impulse response of Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit for Monte-Carlo
SF2 2.0314 -1.1226 simulation for the fault class F2 i.e. R2↓.
Statistical
SF3 0.3624 2.8797
SF4 13.6202 8.4310
SF5 0.0022 0.0076
FD1 (dB) 11.5 13.61
Frequency
FD2 (kHz) 36.4 6.502
domain
FD3 83.0 kHz 6.5 dB
FD4 (deg) -2.2 -103.0

R2, R3, C1 and C2 are most sensitive components of Sallen-

Key band pass filter. Similarly, for biquad high pass filter, R1,
R2, R3, R4, C1 and C2 are most sensitive components. The
tolerance values of resistors and capacitors are considered 5%
and 10% respectively.
TABLE II
FAULT CLASSES OF TEST CIRCUITS

Sallen-Key band pass filter Biquad high pass filter

Fault type Fault class Fault type Fault class
No Fault F0 No Fault F0
Fig. 8 Frequency response of Sallen-Key band pass filter circuit for Monte-
R2↑* F1 R1↑ F1
Carlo simulation for the fault class F2 i.e. R2↓.
R2↓* F2 R1↓ F2
R3↑ F3 R2↑ F3
R3↓ F4 R2↓ F4 Figure 9 shows the distribution of first two principal
C1↑ F5 R3↑ F5 components (defined in equation (5)) of fused features for
C1↓ F6 R3↓ F6 Sallen-Key band pass filter. Accuracies (in percentage) of
C2↑ F7 R4↑ F7 classification of faults of different fault classes are computed
C2↓ F8 R4↓ F8 with SVM. Fault classification is also performed using the
- C1↑ F9 features from individual domain. In that case, PCA is applied
- C1↓ F10 to the features of that particular domain and SVM is trained
- C2↑ F11 with the obtained principal components. Accuracies (in
- C2↓ F12 percentage) of classification with individual domain features
*↑ and ↓ imply higher and lower variation than nominal value.

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are also claculated. Table III shows a comparison of accuracy
of classification of different fault classes using proposed
algorithm of fused features as well as with individual domain
features. It is observed that the accuracy of classification with
proposed fused features are considerably higher than that of
individual domain features. The average accuracy of
classification of Sallen-Key band pass filter with proposed
method is 96.1% whereas the value is 87.7%, 89.6%, 89.8%
and 88.8% for the classification methods with time, frequency,
wavelet and statistical features, respectively.

2
F0 Fig. 10 Impulse response of biquad high pass filter circuit for Monte-Carlo
F1 simulation for the fault class F11 i.e. C2↑
F2
F3
F4
0 F5
F6
F7
PC 2

F8

-2

-4 -2 0 2 4

PC 1
Fig. 9 Distribution of two principal components of fused features of classes
F0-F8 (F0: non-faulty class, F1-F8: fault class) of Sallen-Key band pass filter

TABLE IIII
COMPARISON OF ACCURACY (IN PERCENTAGE) IN DIFFERENT METHODS FOR Fig. 11 Frequency response of biquad high pass filter circuit for Monte-
SALLEN-KEY BAND PASS FILTER CIRCUIT Carlo simulation for the fault class F11 i.e. C2↑

Fault Methods
F0
Class TDF* FDF* WF* SF* Proposed 2 F1
F0 89.0 90.7 90.0 87.1 95.8 F2
F1 88.0 89.7 91.2 88.5 96.4 F3
1 F4
F2 91.6 84.4 89.8 86.9 97.6 F5
F3 88.0 92.8 90.1 89.1 94.1 0
F6
F4 83.1 90.8 82.6 88.2 93.9 F7
PC 2

F8
F5 86.1 88.7 92.2 90.1 97.5 -1 F9
F6 87.7 89.2 92.4 87.9 98.4 F10
F7 90.0 85.6 90.3 93.5 94.4 F11
-2 F12
F8 86.3 94.2 89.9 88.0 96.5
Average -3
87.7 89.6 89.8 88.8 96.1
accuracy -2 -1 0 1 2

*TDF: Time-domain features, FDF: Frequency-domain features, WF: PC 1

Wavelet features, SF: Statistical features
Fig. 12 Distribution of two principal components of fused features of classes
F0-F8 (F0: non-faulty class, F1-F8: fault class) of biquad high pass filter
Figure 10 and 11 represent Monte-Carlo simulation of
impulse and frequency response for the fault class F11 i.e. C2↑
of biquad high pass filter. The distribution of first two principal
components of fused features for biquad high pass filter is
shown in Figure 12. A comparison results for accuracy (in
percentage) of classification among different methods for
different fault classes of biquad high pass filter is shown in
Table IV. In this case also, the accuracy of the proposed method
is found significaltly higher than other existing methods.

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