An Extended Direct Power Injection Method for In-Place Susceptibility Characterization of VLSI Circuits Against Electromagnetic Interference

Abstract

The direct radio frequency power injection (DPI) method was extended using on-chip voltage waveform monitoring and built-in self-test techniques. Static random access memory (SRAM) has been chosen as a demonstrator of the extended DPI method and exhibits a higher susceptibility against the lower interference frequency. This response is explained when we consider the time length of the threshold against how long the supply voltage stays lower than the specific voltage determined for a SRAM core. This voltage is also found to be comparable but slightly smaller than the static voltage margin of SRAM cells. In-place measurements using the extended DPI provide an in-depth understanding of the susceptibility and help us to enhance the immunity of VLSI circuits.