Abstract
As the applications of radio-frequency (RF) circuits continue to prosper, scattering parameters (S-parameters) play an essential role in the verification of a variety of chips. The traditional way to measure the S-parameters of RF integrated circuits (RFICs) is by using vector network analyzers (VNA). However, measuring RFICs with VNAs is very expensive and likely to reduce the profits of IC products. An implementation of the embedded circuit for S-parameter measurement can greatly reduce the costs of using expensive VNAs. Another reason to embed the circuit for S-parameter measurement is to increase the portion of a chip that can be measured. Besides, novel technologies, such as three-dimensional ICs, will require advanced methods for on-chip verifications of RF circuits since many RF nodes may be buried deep inside a chip stack. In view of these needs, this paper proposes a simple network that can realize on-chip S21 measurements. The greatest advantages of this circuit are the easy implementation and technology independence. To verify the feasibility of the circuit, we fabricated the test chips by using the 0.18-μm IBM 7RF process. The measurement results show the expected behavior and demonstrate the feasibility of the design concept.
Highlights
Due to the difficulty of achieving perfect open and perfect short at high frequencies, traditional 2-port parameters, such as Z-parameters, Y-parameters, and ABCD-parameters, are insufficient to fully characterize the properties of a 2-port network
Aiming to reduce the extremely high testing costs of available vector network analyzers (VNA)-based solutions, this paper proposes the solution of embedded S-parameter measurement
COMPARISONS WITH PAST WORKS Different from the related works [4]–[9] reviewed in Section II, the goal of our research is to develop a useful core of circuit that can serve as a general solution capable of performing on-chip S21 measurement on any device under test (DUT)
Summary
Due to the difficulty of achieving perfect open and perfect short at high frequencies, traditional 2-port parameters, such as Z-parameters, Y-parameters, and ABCD-parameters, are insufficient to fully characterize the properties of a 2-port network. S-parameters have become the mainstream parameters for characterizing the behavior of circuits, chips, or systems for radio-frequency (RF), microwave, and millimeter-wave applications. S-parameters are defined as the ratios of the forward and backward propagating waves inside a circuit or a system. These waves generally contain both the magnitude and the phase information. Being the ratios between these propagating waves, S-parameters are measured by complex values. This fact makes S-parameters exceptionally prominent and radically different from traditional measurement methods of analog, mixed-signal, and digital integrated circuits (ICs), in which only real-valued voltages and currents are measured
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