New OBIST Using On-Chip Compensation of Process Variations Toward Increasing Fault Detectability in Analog ICs

A new on-chip oscillation test strategy for analog and mixed-signal circuits is presented. In the proposed method, onchip Schmitt trigger is used as the on-chip frequency reference to compensate the influence of process parameter variations. Furthermore, this solution also brings the possibility to implement Oscillation-based Built-In Self-Test (OBIST) for analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. The proposed OBIST strategy has been experimentally applied to active analog integrated filters, and its efficiency in detecting hard-detectable catastrophic faults is presented. To demonstrate applicability of the proposed method also in nanoscale technologies, the method has been used to test a noninverting amplifier designed in 90 nm CMOS technology. Consequently, the impact of scaling was analyzed and the method efficiency in covering catastrophic faults achieved for 0.35 μm and 90 nm CMOS technology were compared.