Patent ID: 7424390

Claim:
A method for testing a time delay error ratio ER of a device against a maximal allowable time delay error ratio ER limit with an early pass criterion, whereby the early pass criterion is allowed to be wrong only by a first probability D 1 , comprising the following steps: measuring ns time delays (TD) of the device, thereby detecting ne bad time delays, which exceed a certain time limit, of these us time delays (TD), estimating a likelihood distribution giving a distribution of a number ni of bad time delays in a fixed number of samples of time delays (TD) as PD(ni, NE), wherein NE is the average number of bad time delays, obtaining PD high from D 1 = ∫ 0 ne ⁢ PD high ⁡ ( ni , NE high ) ⁢ ⁢ ⅆ ni , wherein PD high is the worst possible likelihood distribution containing the measured ne bad time delays with the probability D 1 , obtaining the average number NE high of bad time delays for the worst possible likelihood distribution PD high , comparing NE high with NE limit =ER limit ·ns, if NE limit is higher than NE high stopping the test and deciding that the device has early passed the test and if NE limit is smaller than NE high continuing the test whereby increasing ns.