MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF THE FLYING PROBE TEST SYSTEM

Abstract

<p>Electrical components are the building blocks of any electronics. These building blocks, when intelligently assembled, form circuits that behave as intended by the designer. Therefore, any errors, such as defective components and assembly errors will cause the end product to have abnormalities. Advancement in technology has led to circuits of higher complexity that require a greater quantity of components as well as a great reduction in individual component size. This translates to finer integrated circuits; more components are placed and packed in the same given area and thus, manual circuit board testing may no longer be feasible. The flying probe tester is an automated circuit board testing/verification system that uses electric probes to first stimulate a circuit and then read and verify its corresponding output values. This thesis examines the processes involved in the flying probe test system and produces a model that characterizes the current sequential method of testing test points. Furthermore, using existing techniques developed through the traveling salesman problem and linear optimization, an efficient model is developed to improve and limit the distance traveled by the probes, thus reducing the required testing time.</p>