Emulation of high-frequency substrate noise generation in CMOS digital circuits

Abstract

A noise emulator is based on the capacitor charging modeling and generates power and substrate noises expected in a CMOS digital integrated circuit. An off-chip near-magnetic-field sensor indirectly characterizes the distribution of clock timing and the adjustability of skews within on-chip digital circuits. An on-chip noise monitor captures power and substrate noise waveforms and evaluates noise frequency components in a wide frequency bandwidth. A 65 nm CMOS prototype demonstrated power and substrate noise generation in a variety of operating scenarios of digital integrated circuits. Power noise generation emulated at 125 MHz exhibits the enhancements of high-order harmonic components after deskewing at a timing resolution of 37.8 ps, as is specifically seen in more than 10 dB enlargement of the substrate noise component at 2.1 GHz.