Novel Current Sensing Circuit for IDDQ Testing

This paper presents a new current monitoring circuit that detects faults using the current testing technique in CMOS integrated circuits. This circuit employs cross-coupled PMOS transistors, it is used as a current comparator. The proposed circuit is a negligible impact on the performance of the circuit under test (CUT). In addition, no extra power dissipation and high-speed fault detection are achieved. It can be applicable deep sub-micron process. The validity and effectiveness are verified through the HSPICE simulation on circuits with faults. The area overhead of a BICS versus the entire chip is about 9.2%. The chip was fabricated with Hynix 0.35 um 2-poly 4-metal N-well CMOS process.