Transient power supply current monitoring?A new test method for CMOS VLSI circuits

Parametric testing of mixed-signal circuits by ANN processing of transient responses

“…Circuit partitioning into its behavioral blocks has a number of advantages from the points of view of both system design and testing, as discussed, e.g., in [4,18,19]. The lack of efficient methods for parametric diagnosis of analog behavioral blocks has been pointed out in this literature.…”

“…On the other hand, the CUT output pin is not always available in large systems. As pointed out, e.g., in [4], power supply current can be monitored in such cases. This approach can reduce the number of circuit pins required for internal parameter identification.…”

“…Another promising testing technique which has recently been developed relies on monitoring transients in power supply current [4]. Defects like shorts or floating gates in CMOS circuits can be detected by analysing the current transients during circuit switching, without any need for propagating the information to an output pin.…”

“…Neural networks can be trained to "memorise" this correlation and recall the unknown parameter values given a particular waveform recorded. Therefore, we also propose to combine the two techniques of, respectively, [ 1] and [4] to obtain a fast and robust method for analog and mixed-signal circuit testing. The method needs fewer test points, provided proper pseudo-partitioning technique is used [4,5].…”

“…Therefore, we also propose to combine the two techniques of, respectively, [ 1] and [4] to obtain a fast and robust method for analog and mixed-signal circuit testing. The method needs fewer test points, provided proper pseudo-partitioning technique is used [4,5]. A numerical and experimental example of a CMOS inverter parametric testing by ANN-based processing of transient power supply current waveform is presented to show the validity of this approach.…”