Impulse signal generation and measurement technique for cost-effective Built-In Self Test in analog mixed-signal systems

This paper presents an impulse signal generation and measurement technique for cost-effective built-in self test (BIST) in analog mixed-signal systems. The testing technique is based on a single effective sampling point of impulse responses. This technique offers high fault coverage and a high speed testing process, and eliminates the need for high-precision analog stimuli and complicated fault characterization algorithms. The BIST is relatively compact, implemented by a delay line and a track-and-hold circuit with window comparator. No fault-free bit streams and digital processing units are required. Trails of the BIST system for the 8^th-order Sallen-Key lowpass filter using 0.18-mum CMOS technology show a low area overhead of 11.19%. High fault coverage of 98.24% for both catastrophic faults and parameter variations was achieved.