Abstract
In this paper, an oscillation-based built-in self-test system for active an analog integrated circuit is presented. This built-in self-test system was used to detect catastrophic and parametric faults, introduced during chip manufacturing. As circuits under test (CUT), second-order Sallen-Key, Akerberg-Mossberg and Tow-Thomas biquad filters were designed. The proposed test hardware detects parametric and catastrophic faults on changeable limits. The influence of both oscillation and test hardware on fault detection limits were investigated and analyzed. The proposed oscillation based self-test system was designed and simulated in 0.18 µm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Due to the easiness of implementation and configuration for testing of different active analog filters, such self-test systems can be effectively used in modern integrated circuits, made of a large number of devices and circuits, such as the multi-standard transceivers used in the core hardware of software-defined radios. Using the proposed test strategy, the fault tolerance limits for catastrophic faults varied from 96% to 100% for all injected faults in different structures of low pass filters (LPF). The detection range of parametric faults of passive components’ nominal value, depending on the used structure of the filter, did not exceed –0.74% – 0.72% in case of Sallen-Key, –3.31% – 1.00% in case of Akerberg-Mossberg and –2.39% – 1.44% in case of Tow-Thomas LPF.
Highlights
Advances in nanoscale complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies introduce both new possibilities and challenges.With increasing integration density of circuits, testing routines for more analog or mixed-signal systems are required
As a circuit under test (CUT), low pass filters (LPF) of various structures were designed and investigated, namely Sallen-Key, Akerberg-Mossberg and Tow-Thomas biquad filters, since these structures are used in modern wireless transceivers and their built-in self-test (BIST) test results differ based on the transfer function and sensitivity to the variations of the components
In the case of catastrophic fault detection, an on-chip Schmitt oscillator could be used as a reference signal for counting CUT pulses, but such approach cannot be used for the detection of parametric faults [28]
Summary
Advances in nanoscale CMOS technologies introduce both new possibilities and challenges.With increasing integration density of circuits, testing routines for more analog or mixed-signal systems are required. Post fabrication test routines are time and cost demanding; often it is not possible to test all of a system’s sub circuits Due to these reasons, built-in self-test (BIST) systems are being implemented in chips. In case of a limited chip area, BIST systems are widely used [1,2,3,4] and provide sufficient data for deciding on chip manufacturing faults. Such systems are used only to monitor any catastrophic or parametric fault, which emerge during CMOS fabrication. Such faults most often can be detected and located
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