A New Self-Healing Methodology for RF Amplifier Circuits Based on Oscillation Principles

作者：Goyal Abhilash^*; Swaminathan Madhavan; Chatterjee Abhijit; Howard Duane C; Cressler John D

来源：IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems, 2012, 20(10): 1835-1848.

DOI：10.1109/TVLSI.2011.2163953

• Agilent's Advance Design System (ADS)
• Cadence
• low noise amplifier (LNA)
• MATLAB
• oscillation-based test
• oscillations
• self-calibration
• self-healing
• self-testing
• yield

This paper proposes a new self-healing methodology for embedded RF amplifiers in RF sub-systems. The proposed methodology is based on oscillation principles in which the device-under-test (DUT) generates its test signature with the help of additional circuitry. In the proposed methodology, the self-generated test signature from the RF amplifier is analyzed by using on-chip resources for testing and controlling its calibration knobs to compensate for multi-parameter variations in the manufacturing process. Thus, the proposed methodology enables self-test and self-calibration/correction of RF amplifiers without the need for an external test stimulus, enabling true self-healing RF designs. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through simulations as well as measurements performed on an RF LNA, which were designed in a commercially-available SiGe BiCMOS process technology.

• 出版日期2012-10