Abstract: Effectiveness is an integrated measurement of all parameters. This paper presents firstly eight technical parameters which measure the effectiveness of the automatic test equipment (ATE). They are fault detection rate (FDR), fault isolation rate (FIR), fault detection accuracy (FDA), test time (td), fault detection probability (Pd), fault missing probability(Pm), false alarm probability (Pf) and fault resoonluti (δ).Then the paper focuses its main discussion on establishing the effectiveness equation of ATE, during the process of which the authors begin with establishing and solving the operational state equation of ATE, and then deduce the fault detection effectiveness equation, fault isolation effectiveness equation without ambiguity and finally the fault isolation effectiveness equation with ambiguity, which is the ATE effectiveness equation providing a theoretical basis for analyzing and synthesizing the ATE parameters.

Key words: automatic test equipment, parameters of ATE, test effectiveness