Evaluation of harmonic cancellation techniques for sinusoidal signal generation in mixed-signal BIST

Abstract

The on-chip generation of high quality at-speed sinusoidal stimuli is a key point for enabling a wide variety of mixed-signal BIST (Built-In Self-Test) strategies. Efficient test stimulus generators for BIST applications should have the attributes of high spectral quality and reduced circuitry resources, which make the design of these generators a challenging task. This work compares the application of two different harmonic cancellation strategies to a family of simple on-chip sinusoidal generators. The application of advanced spectral manipulation techniques not only may improve the spectral quality of the generated signals, but it may also ease up the design of these on-chip generators by relaxing some design constraints. This work evaluates the spectral performance and design trade-offs derived from the application of the considered harmonic cancellation techniques. Simulation results are provided in order to illustrate our analysis.