A novel technique to detect Aging in analog/mixed-signal circuits

Abstract

The increasing complexity of current and future ICs has the issue of more complex and more expensive test especially in mixed signal circuit designs. As Opamps are used in a wide applications of analog/mixed-signal circuits, this paper presents a BIST technique to detect aging in mixed signal circuits. This technique uses the internal Opamps as their aging sensors. The basic idea of our proposed technique relies on detecting changes on slew rate of Opamps inside mixed-signal circuits. Our Hspice simulations show that our proposed architecture is able to fully detect aging in our test circuit.