A Built-In Loopback Test Methodology for RF Transceiver Circuits Using Embedded Sensor Circuits

Authors:
Soumendu Bhattacharya;Abhijit Chatterjee
Affiliations:
Georgia Institute of Technology;Georgia Institute of Technology
Venue:
ATS '04 Proceedings of the 13th Asian Test Symposium
Year:
2004

Citing 0
Cited 5

Spectral Prediction for Specification-Based Loopback Test of Embedded Mixed-Signal Circuits

Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications
Fault Coverage on RF VCOs and BIST for Wafer Sort Using Peak-to-Peak Voltage Detectors

Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications
Detailed characterization of transceiver parameters through loop-back-based BiST

IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
An analytical technique for characterization of transceiver IQ imbalances in the loop-back mode

DATE '12 Proceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe
Enhancing confidence in indirect analog/RF testing against the lack of correlation between regular parameters and indirect measurements

Microelectronics Journal

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.01

Visualization

Abstract

Testing of on-chip RF and microwave circuits has always been a challenge for test engineers. Since the emergence of Systems-on-a-Chip (SoCs), characterization and test development for SoCs has become a significant part of the RF IC manufacturing cost. In this paper, we propose a RF built-in-test methodology using on-chip sensors. Instead of measuring the device performance metrics (not possible for embedded RF circuits), the sensor output values (low frequency or DC) are used to estimate the performance metrics of the embedded device under test (DUT). The method has high coverage of defective DUTs for low-yielding processes. An algorithm for optimal placement of sensors on internal transceiver nodes is presented and two test cases are discussed. In this paper, we use the sensor outputs to obtain an estimate of the specification values of the system and the individual modules. Using this method, test specification values can be estimated with very high accuracy.