A Low-Power and Area-Efficient Design of a Weighted Pseudorandom Test-Pattern Generator for a Test-Per-Scan Built-in Self-Test Architecture

Abstract

A test pattern generator generates a pseudorandom test pattern that can be weighted to reduce the fault coverage in a built-in self-test. The objective of this paper is to propose a new weighted TPG for a scan-based BIST architecture. The motivation of this work is to generate efficient weighted patterns for enabling scan chains with reduced power consumption and area. Additionally, the pseudo-primary seed of TPG is maximized to obtain a considerable length in the weighted pseudorandom patterns. The maximum-length weighted patterns are executed by assigning separate weights to the specific scan chains using a weight-enabled clock. This approach reduces the hardware overhead and achieves a low power consumption of 26.7 nW. Moreover, the proposed weighted TPG is applied in two different test-per-scan BIST architectures and achieves accurate results. The weighted patterns are also generated with fewer switching transitions and higher fault coverages of 98.81% and 97.35% in two different BIST architectures. This process is observed with six other circuits under test as their scan chains. The simulation results are tested with a SilTerra 0.13 µm process on the Mentor Graphics IC design platform. Furthermore, the proposed weighted TPG is enlarged to a higher bit TPG, which is compared to accomplish the performance strategies. The experimental results of the proposed TPG design are compared and tabulated with existing potential TPG designs. INDEX TERMS built-in self-test (BIST), circuit under test (CUT), test-pattern generator (TPG).

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