Power integrity control of ATE for emulating power supply fluctuations on customer environment

Abstract

This paper proposes a power integrity control technique for dynamically controlling power supply voltage fluctuations for a device under test (DUT). The proposed method controls the power supply voltage on an automatic test equipment (ATE) system in a feed-forward manner by supplying a compensation current into the power supply line based on the power supply voltage waveform difference between the ATE and the customer operational environment of the DUT. A method is described for calculating the compensation current from an impulse response of the device power supply (DPS) network in the ATE and a target power supply voltage waveform. Experimental results with a prototype circuit are demonstrated to confirm the proposed concept. The proposed method can emulate the power supply voltage waveform under a customer's operating condition that has never been tested before. Furthermore, this method can stabilize the power supply voltage of the DUT and realize an arbitrary power supply noise waveform profile. Limitations and applications of the proposed method are also discussed.