• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.491-500
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• 2012

In this paper, a new loopback BIST structure which is effective to test RF transceiver chip and LNA(Low Noise Amplifier) in the chip is presented. Because the presented BIST structure uses a baseband processor in the chip as a tester while the system is under testing mode, the developed test technique has an advantage of performing test application and test evaluation in effectiveness. The presented BIST structure can change high frequency test output signals to a low frequency signals which can make the CUT(circuits under test) tested easily. By using this technique, the necessity of RF test equipment can be mostly reduced. The test time and test cost of RF circuits can be cut down by using proposed BIST structure, and finally the total chip manufacturing costs can be reduced.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.641-649
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• 2016

In this paper, a novel time-domain measurement technique on a high parallelism probe card with protection resistors installed is proposed. The measured signal amplitude decreases when the measurement is performed by Needle Auto Calibration (NAC) probing on a high parallelism probe card with installed resistors. Therefore, the original signals must be carefully reconstructed, and the compensation coefficient, which is related to the number of channel branches and the value of protection resistors, must be introduced. The accuracy of the reconstructed signals is analyzed based on the varying number of channel branches and various protection resistances. The results demonstrate that the proposed technique is appropriate for evaluating the overall signal performance of probe cards with Automatic Test Equipment (ATE), which enhances the efficiency of probe card performance test dramatically.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2014

This paper describes the implementation of high speed comparator for the ATE (automatic test equipment) system. The comparator block is composed of continuous comparator, differential difference amplifier(DDA) and output stage. For the wide input dynamic range of 0V to 5V, and for the high speed operation (1~800MHz), high speed rail-to-rail amplifier is used in the first stage. And hysteresis circuits, pre-amp and latch are followed for high speed operation. To measure the difference of output signals between the two devices under test (DUTs), a DDA is applied because it can detect the differences of both common signals and differential signals. This comparator chip was implemented with $0.18{\mu}m$ BCDMOS process and can compare the signal difference of 5mV up to the frequency range of 800 MHz. The chip area of the comparator is $620{\mu}m{\times}830{\mu}m$.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2016

This paper describes a new PMU(parametric measurement unit) design technique for automatic test equipment(ATE). Only one DDA(differential difference amplifier) is used to force the test signals to DUT(device under test), while conventional design uses two or more amplifiers to force test signals. Since the proposed technique does not need extra amplifiers in feedback path, the proposed PMU inherently guarantees stable operation. Moreover, to measure the response signals from DUT, proposed technique also adopted only one DDA amplifier as an IA(instrument amplifier), while conventional IA uses 3 amplifiers and several resistors. The DDA adopted two rail-to-rail differential input stages to handle full-range differential signals. Gain enhancement technique is used in folded-cascode type DDA to get open loop gain of 100 dB. Proposed PMU design enables accurate and stable operation with smaller hardware and lower power consumption. This PMU is implemented with 0.18 um CMOS process and supply voltage is 1.8 V. Input ranges for each force mode are 0.25~1.55 V at voltage force and 0.9~0.935 V at current force mode.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.439-447
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• 2013

To increase device memory yield, many manufacturers use incorporated redundancy to replace faulty cells. In this redundancy technology, the implementation of an effective redundancy analysis (RA) algorithm is essential. Various RA algorithms have been developed to repair faults in memory. However, nearly all of these RA algorithms have low analysis speeds. The more densely compacted the memory is, the more testing and repair time is needed. Even if the analysis speed is very high, the RA algorithm would be useless if it did not have a normalized repair rate of 100%. In addition, when the number of added spares is increased in the memory, then the memory space that must be searched with the RA algorithms can exceed the memory space within the automatic test equipment. A very efficient RA algorithm using simple calculations is proposed in this work so as to minimize both the repair time and memory consumption. In addition, the proposed algorithm generates an optimal solution using a tree-based algorithm in each fault group. Our experiment results show that the proposed RA algorithm is very efficient in terms of speed and repair.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.437-443
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose the power-aware test framework for Network-on-Chip, which is based on embedded processor and on-chip network. First, the possibility of using embedded processor and on-chip network isintroduced and evaluated with benchmark system to test the other embeddedcores. And second, a new generation method of test pattern is presented to reduce the power consumption of on-chip network, which is called don't care mapping. The experimental results show that the embedded processor can be executed like the automatic test equipments, and the test time is reduced and the power consumption is reduced up to 8% at the communication components.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.1260-1270
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• 2007

Testing and diagnosis of analog circuits(or mixed-signal circuits) continue to be a hard task for test engineers and efficient test methodologies to solve these problems are needed. This paper proposes a novel analog circuits test technique using time slot specification (TSS) based built-in current sensors (BICS). A technique for location of a fault site and separation of fault type based on TSS is also presented. The proposed built-in current sensors and TSS technique has high testability, fault coverage and a capability to diagnose catastrophic faults and parametric faults in analog circuits. In order to reduce time complexity of test point insertion procedure, external output and power nodes are used for test points and the current sensors are implemented in the automatic test equipment(ATE). The digital output of BICS can be easily combined with built-in digital test modules for analog IC test.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.478-481
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• 2012

Testing memory and repairing faults have become increasingly important for improving yield. Redundancy analysis (RA) algorithms have been developed to repair memory faults. However, many RA algorithms have low analysis speeds and occupy memory space within automatic test equipment. A fast RA algorithm using simple calculations is proposed in this letter to minimize both the test and repair time. This analysis uses the grouped addresses in the faulty bitmap. Since the fault groups are independent of each other, the time needed to find solutions can be greatly reduced using these fault groups. Also, the proposed algorithm does not need to store searching trees, thereby minimizing the required memory space. Our experiments show that the proposed RA algorithm is very efficient in terms of speed and memory requirements.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2007

Probe card is a test component which is to classify the known good die with electrical contact before the packaging in the ATE (automatic testing equipment). Conventional probe tip was mostly needle type, it has been difficult to meet with conventional type, because of decreasing chip size, pad to pad pitch and pads size increasingly. For that reason, probe cards using MEMS (micro electro mechanical system) technology have been developed for various semiconductor chips. In this paper, Area Array type MEMS Probe tip was designed,, fabricated, and characterized its mechanical and electrical properties. The authors found that good electrical characteristics under $1{\Omega}$ were acquired with gold (Au) and aluminium (Al) pad contact test over 0.5gf and 4gf respectively. And, contact resistance variation under $0.1{\Omega}$ were achieved with 100,000 times of repetition test. And, insertion loss (IS) for high frequency operation was ascertained over 300MHz at -3dB loss.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.560-567
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• 2013

In this paper, it is proposed the fault detection method of the ASIC, without the Test Requirement Document(TRD), extracting internal logic circuit and analyzed the function of the ASIC using the multipurpose development program and simulation. If there don't have the TRD, it is impossible to analyze the operation of the circuit and find out the fault detection in any chip. Therefore, we make the TRD based on the analyzed logic data of the ASIC, and diagnose of the ASIC circuit at the gate level through the signal control of I/O pins using the Dynamic Pattern signal. According to the experimental results of the proposed method, we is confirmed the good performance of the fault detection capabilities which applied to the non-memory circuit.