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Low Cost BIST for Static and Dynamic Testing of ADCs

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Abstract

This paper presents a low cost test method for the static and dynamic characterization of analog-to-digital converters. The method is suitable for implementation in a SoC environment, as a built-in self test (BIST) solution. In the proposed approach, noise is used as the test signal. Theory of operation and practical results demonstrating the effectiveness of the method for INL, DNL, THD and SINAD characterization are presented. The BIST surface overhead caused by the noise generator is only 7.4% of the ADC total area. The reduced number of data samples required allows a reduction of about 7.5× in test time, in comparison to the histogram method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Maria Da Gloria Flores, Luigi Carro & Altamiro A. Susin

  2. Instituto de Informática-PPGC, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Marcelo Negreiros

  3. Motorola SPS at Brazil Semiconductor Technology Center, BSTC, Jaguariúna, SP, Brazil

    Felipe R. Clayton & Cristiano Benevento

Authors
  1. Maria Da Gloria Flores
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  2. Marcelo Negreiros
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  3. Luigi Carro
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  4. Altamiro A. Susin
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  5. Felipe R. Clayton
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  6. Cristiano Benevento
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luigi Carro.

Additional information

Maria da Gloria Cataldi Flores was born in Santa Maria, Brazil, in 1978. She received the electrical engineering degree in 2000 from Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) and the M.S. degree engineering in 2003 from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. Since then, she has been working as a design engineer in an EAS Supply brazilian company. Her main research interests include mixed-signal and analog testing and digital signal processing.

Marcelo Negreiros was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1969. He received the electrical engineering degree in 1992 and the M.S. degree engineering in 1994, both from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. Since then he was been working as an associate researcher in the Signal Processing Lab. (LaPSI) of the Electrical Engineering Department at UFRGS. Since 2000 he also works toward a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UFRGS. His main research interests include mixed-signal and analog testing and digital signal processing.

Luigi Carro was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1962. He received the Electrical Engineering and the M.Sc. degrees from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1985 and 1989, respectively. From 1989 to 1991 he worked at ST-Microelectronics, Agrate, Italy, in the R&D group. In 1996 he received the Ph.D. degree in the area of Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. He is presently a lecturer at the Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS, in charge of Digital Systems Design and Digital Signal processing disciplines at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is also a member of the Graduation Program in Computer Science of UFRGS, where he is responsible for courses in Embedded Systems, Digital Signal Processing, and VLSI Design. His primary research interests include mixed-signal design, digital signal processing, mixed-signal and analog testing, and fast system prototyping. He has published more than 90 technical papers in those topics and is the author of the book Digital Systems Design and Prototyping (in portuguese).

Altamiro A Susin was born in Vacaria-RS, Brazil, in 1945. He received the Electrical Engineering and the MSc. degrees from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1972 and 1977, respectively. Since 1968 he worked in the start up of Computer Centers of two local Universities. In 1981 he got his Dr. Eng degree from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble-France. He is presently a lecturer at the Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS, in charge of Digital Systems Design disciplines at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is also a member of the Graduation Program in Computer Science of UFRGS, where he is responsible by courses in VLSI Architecture and is also thesis director. His main research interests are Integrated Circuit Architecture, Embedded Systems, Signal Processing with more than 50 technical papers published in those domains. He is/was responsible for several R&D projects either funded with public and/or industry resources.

Felipe Ricardo Clayton received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, in 1986. He worked at CPqD (Brazilian PTT R&D Center) till 1996 designing analog and mixed signal circuits for telecom and automotive applications. From 1997 to the second half of 1998, he worked at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, under the guidance of Prof. Carlos Azeredo Leme on development of CMOS RF circuits. Since October 1998 he had worked for Motorola SPS. Now he is head of the Power Managment Group at Freescale.

Cristiano Benevento received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, in 1997. He worked at Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group until August 2000 as a Systems Engineer. He joined Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector in August 2000 as IC Designer for Power Management Group and is now at Freescale.

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Da Gloria Flores, M., Negreiros, M., Carro, L. et al. Low Cost BIST for Static and Dynamic Testing of ADCs. J Electron Test 21, 283–290 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-005-6357-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-005-6357-5

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