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New Programmable RF DFT Circuit for Low Noise Amplifiers  

Ryu, Jee-Youl (Samsung SDI Co., Ltd.)
Noh, Seok-Ho (Major of Electronic Engineering, College of Electronic & Information Engineering, Andong National University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC / v.44, no.4, 2007 , pp. 28-39 More about this Journal
Abstract
This paper presents a programmable RF DFT (Radio Frequency Design-for-Testability) circuit for low noise amplifiers. We have developed a new on-chip RF DFT circuit that measures RF parameters of low noise amplifier (LNA) using only DC measurements [1, 2]. This circuit is extremely useful for today's RFIC devices in a complete RF transceiver environment. The DFT circuit contains test amplifier with programmable capacitor banks and RF peak detectors. The test circuit utilizes output DC voltage measurements and these measured values are translated into the LNA specifications such as input impedance and gain using the mathematical equations. Our on-chip DFT circuit can be self programmed for 1.8GHz, 2.4GHz and 5.25GHz low noise amplifiers for GSM, Bluetooth and IEEE802.11g standards. The circuit is simple and inexpensive.
Keywords
Programmable RF DFT; low noise amplifier; DC measurement;
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