Automatic test signal generation for mixed-signal integrated circuits using circuit partitioning and interval analysis

Abstract

A method is presented to address the automatic generation of test signals for analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. No restriction on the number of inputs or the nonlinearity of the circuit are made. The circuit under consideration is first decomposed into a set of sub-circuits, called blocks, in order to break down the complexity of the problem. The effect of a targeted fault is then automatically analyzed at the transistor level in a defect-oriented context. From this analysis, the fault sensitization conditions are extracted and then backtraced towards the primary inputs or outputs of the circuit using an algorithm based on the interval analysis theory. The underlying algorithms supporting the automation of the whole procedure are illustrated for basic circuits. Finally, in order to demonstrate the method, an industrial circuit is used as case study. It is shown that test signals can be generated in order to achieve a fault coverage of 98%.

Machine Learning-based Defect Coverage Boosting of Analog Circuits under Measurement Variations

“…Therefore, other techniques are necessary. However, the fault coverage levels of system-level tests are well below those of recently presented methods [7,14], which achieve over 90%. To achieve these levels, we apply our fault coverage boosting technique in the next section.…”

Adaptive Test With Test Escape Estimation for Mixed-Signal ICs

“…In recent years, there has been an intense effort to develop alternative test approaches that can replace effectively the standard test approach. Alternative test approaches include defect-oriented test that improves test quality and can replace the standard test approach in the case of robust designs that are very well centered and never fail due to process variations [1]- [4], design-for-test and built-in self-test that aim to speedup the test by alleviating also the ATE requirements [5]- [8], and H.-G. Stratigopoulos is with Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, CNRS, LIP6, Paris, France (e-mail: haralampos.stratigopoulos@lip6.fr).…”

Non-intrusive detection of defects in mixed-signal integrated circuits using light activation

“…Methods based on test signal generation have therefore been proposed in order to optimize the available controllability through the primary inputs of analog and mixed-signal circuits [8]- [13]. A hierarchical fault-based approach has been proposed to generate a set of test frequencies which can result in either a maximum fault coverage or a minimum number of frequencies [8].…”

“…Furthermore, the use of ATPG algorithms has been extended to high-speed analog circuits by [12]. Finally, an ATPG algorithm based on circuit partitioning and interval analysis has been proven to be successful without any limitation on the number of inputs or the nonlinearity of the circuit [13]. However, these methods rely only on the available circuit inputs.…”