Parametric Built-In Test for 65nm RF LNA Using Non-Intrusive Variation-Aware Sensors

Abstract

International audienceTesting the RF functions of systems-on-chip incurs a very high cost. Built-in test is a promising alternative to facilitate testing and reduce cost. However, designing built-in test circuits that tap into the sensitive RF signal paths, in order to extract useful information for the purpose of testing, often finds the designers reluctant since it results in some performance degradation that needs to be accounted for during the design. In this paper, we study a transparent built-in test approach based on non-intrusive sensors that are not electrically connected to the RF circuit under test. The non-intrusive sensors simply monitor process variations and by virtue of this they are capable of tracking variations in the performances of the RF circuit as well. The alternate test paradigm is employed to map the outputs of the sensors to the performances, in order to replace the standard tests for measuring the performances directly. We discuss in this paper the principle of operation of these sensors and we demonstrate the non-intrusive test approach on a 65nm RF low noise amplifier

Influence of PVT Variation and Threshold Selection on OBT and OBIST Fault Detection in RFCMOS Amplifiers

“…All fault-free circuits that fail the threshold detection test is assumed to be part of P(YL), and all faulty circuits that pass the test is assumed to be part of P(TE). Due to this conservative approach, the test escape that correspond to the best FoM (0.953) at P(TE) = 5•10 -2 is much worse in this study than that of an optimized P(TE) = 9.09•10 -4 from [16] and P(TE) = 1.98•10 -4 from [60]. Due to the CI choice of 0.9, the yield loss that correspond to the best FoM in this study is high at P(YL) = 1.89•10 -2 compared to that of P(YL)= 9.1•10 -3 from [16] and P(YL) = 1.98• 10 -4 from [60].…”

“…Numerous approaches to analogue [6]- [8] and RF [9]- [15] built-in self-testing (BIST) have been proposed, with most of the state-of-the-art techniques relying on indirect parameter measurement using nonintrusive sensors [16] or predictive modelling [17], whereas the classical approaches [18] require the application of some test stimulus.…”

Investigations on the Use of Ensemble Methods for Specification-Oriented Indirect Test of RF Circuits

“…This approach of indirect testing has been largely studied in the literature over the past twenty years [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The general objective is to find solutions to improve the accuracy of the correlation between IMs and RF performances of the circuit and to ensure a good robustness of the prediction during the production testing phase.…”