Boosted gain programmable Opamp with embedded gain monitor for dependable SoCs

Author

Wan, Jinbo ; Kerkhoff, Hans G.

Author_Institution

Testable Design & Test of Integrated Syst. (TDT) Group, Univ. of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands

fYear

2011

fDate

17-18 Nov. 2011

Firstpage

294

Lastpage

297

Abstract

SoCs used in safety-critical applications need to be dependable. However in the deep-submicron region, different kinds of aging effects like negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) make the SoCs, especially the analog/mixed-signal parts, undependable. In this paper, a dependability-improved Opamp is designed based on gain programmability and digital gain monitoring. To accomplish an extra gain range for tuning in 65nm technology, a new voltage-gain boosting method is proposed to provide a maximum 92dB gain in a single amplification stage. The NBTI influence is investigated using Cadence RelXpert and dependability properties for the Opamp are provided.

Keywords

amplification; operational amplifiers; semiconductor device models; system-on-chip; Cadence RelXpert; NBTI; SoC; aging effect; amplification; analog-mixed-signal part; boosted gain programmable opamp; digital gain monitoring; embedded gain monitor; gain programmability; negative bias temperature instability; safety-critical application; voltage-gain boosting method; NBTI; Opamp; dependability; gain boosting;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

SoC Design Conference (ISOCC), 2011 International

Conference_Location

Jeju

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0709-4

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4577-0710-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISOCC.2011.6138768

Filename

6138768