Efficient Signature-Driven Self-Test for Differential Mixed-Signal Circuits

Predicting precise specifications of differential mixed-signal circuits is a difficult problem, because analytically derived correlation between process variations and conventional specifications exhibits the limited prediction accuracy due to the phase unbalance, for most self-tests. This paper proposes an efficient prediction technique to provide accurate specifications of differential mixed-signal circuits in a system-on-chip (SoC) based on a nonlinear statistical nonlinear regression technique. A spectrally pure sinusoidal signal is applied to a differential DUT, and its output is fed into another differential DUT through a weighting circuitry in the loopback configuration. The weighting circuitry, which is employed from the previous work, efficiently produces different weights on the harmonics of the loopback responses, i.e., the signatures. The correlation models, which map the signatures to the conventional specifications, are built based on the statistical nonlinear regression technique, in order to predict accurate nonlinearities of individual DUTs. In production testing, once the efficient signatures are measured, and plugged into the obtained correlation models, the harmonic coefficients of DUTs are readily identified. This work provides a practical test solution to overcome the serious test issue of differential mixed-signal circuits; the low accuracy of analytically derived model is much lower by the errors from the unbalance. Hardware measurement results showed less than 1.0 dB of the prediction error, validating that this approach can be used as production test.