Degradation Sensor Circuits for Indirect Measurements in Re-configurable Analog Circuit Design

Time-dependent degradation mechanisms have become more pronounced for deep-submicron devices, where dramatically increased aging effects lead to circuit malfunctions over time. Re-configurable circuit design is one of the approaches in order to combat with aging phenomena. In those approaches, degradation on circuit performances are captured via a sensor circuitry (Sense) and an ad-hoc recovery operation is applied to the circuits (React). Sense operation is the most critical part for reliable operation, where aging on performances are indirectly captured from the measurable circuit quantities such as voltages, currents, and phase/frequency. In this study, sense operation is discussed in detail, sensor circuits for each type of sensing approach are designed, and demonstrated through case studies.