An Adaptive Ramp Generator for ADC Built-in Self-Test

An adaptive ramp generator based on linear histogram was proposed for the built-in selftest (BIST) of analog to digital convertor (ADC) in CMOS image sensor. By comparing the generated ramp signal to a reference voltage and feeding back a calibration signal, the slope adjustment was implemented, and high linearity and precision of ramp slope were realized. By modulating the pulse width and reference voltage, sweep length varied from microsecond to second and signal swing could reach 3 V with 5.6 mW power consumption. The ramp was used as input to an ideal 10-bit single-slope ADC, and the corresponding DNL and INL were 0.032 LSB and 0.078 LSB, re-spectively.

A vector inserting TPG for BIST design with low peak power consumption

A test pattern generator （TPG） which can highly reduce the peak power consumption during built-in self-test （BIST） application is proposed. The proposed TPG, called LPpe-TPG, consists of a linear feedback shift register （LFSR） and some control circuits. A procedure is presented firstly to make compare vectors between pseudorandom test patterns by adding some circuits to the original LFSR and secondly to insert some vectors between two successive pseudorandom test patterns according to the ordinal selection of every two bits of the compare vector. Then the changes between any successive test patterns of the test set generated by the LPpe-TPG are not more than twice. This leads to a decrease of the weighted switching activity （WSA） of the circuit under test （CUT） and therefore a reduction of the power consumption. Experimental results based on some ISCAS＇ 85 benchmark circuits show that the peak power consumption has been reduced by 25.25% to 64.46%. Also, the effectiveness of our approach to reduce the total and average power consumption is kept, without losing stuck-at fault coverage.

AVAILABILITY MODEL FOR SELF TEST AND REPAIR IN FAULT TOLERANT FPGA-BASED SYSTEMS

Dynamically reconfigurable Field Programmable Gate Array(dr-FPGA) based electronic systems on board mission-critical systems are highly susceptible to radiation induced hazards that may lead to faults in the logic or in the configuration memory. The aim of our research is to characterize self-test and repair processes in Fault Tolerant(FT) dr-FPGA systems in the presence of environmental faults and explore their interrelationships. We develop a Continuous Time Markov Chain(CTMC) model that captures the high level fail-repair processes on a dr-FPGA with periodic online Built-In Self-Test(BIST) and scrubbing to detect and repair faults with minimum latency. Simulation results reveal that given an average fault interval of 36 s, an optimum self-test interval of 48.3 s drives the system to spend 13% of its time in self-tests, remain in safe working states for 76% of its time and face risky fault-prone states for only 7% of its time. Further, we demonstrate that a well-tuned repair strategy boosts overall system availability, minimizes the occurrence of unsafe states, and accommodates a larger range of fault rates within which the system availability remains stable within 10% of its maximum level.

High Level Synthesis for Loop-Based BIST

Area and test time are two major overheads encountered duringdata path high level synthesis for BIST. This paper presents an approach to behavioral synthesis for loop-based BIST. By taking into account the requirements of theBIST scheme during behavioral synthesis processes, an area optimal BIST solutioncan be obtained. This approach is based on the use of test resources reusabilitythat results in a fewer number of registers being modified to be test registers. Thisis achieved by incorporating self-testability constraints during register assignmentoperations. Experimental results on benchmarks are presented to demonstrate theeffectiveness of the approach.

Exploiting Deterministic TPG for Path Delay Testing

Detection of path delay faults requires two-pattern tests. BIST technique provides a low-cost test solution. This paper proposes an approach to designing a cost-effective deterministic test pattern generator (TPG) for path delay testing. Given a set of pre-generated test-pairs with pre-determined fault coverage, a deterministic TPG is synthesized to apply the given test-pair set in a limited test time. To achieve this objective, configurable linear feedback shift register (LFSR) structures are used. Techniques are developed to synthesize such a TPG, which is used to generate an unordered deterministic test-pair set. The resulting TPG is very efficient in terms of hardware size and speed performance. Simulation of academic benchmark circuits has given good results when compared to alternative solutions.