Design and characterization of an active, EMC-dedicated testchip

This paper analyzes the radiated EMC-behaviour of integrated circuits. For this purpose, an active EMC testchip has been designed, focusing on some specific topics such as output driver slew-rate control, on-chip decoupling, ground-bounce reduction, and others. Together with a dedicated EMC-testboard for mounting the chip, as well as a suited EMC measurement set-up, a global configuration is obtained that enables us to perform an in-depth assessment of some important EMC radiating mechanisms at chip level. The first part of this paper describes the design of the EMC-testchip. In the second part, some first EMC-measurements on the testchip are discussed. From this study, it is quantified to what extent output signal staggering and slew-rate control can help in solving EMC-problems at chip-level