• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.381-386
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• 2014

A highly reliable safety class controller for NPPs (Nuclear Power Plants) is mandatory as even a minor malfunction can lead to disastrous consequences for people, the environment or the facility. In order to enhance the reliability of a safety class digital controller for NPPs, we employed a diversity approach, in which a PLC-type controller and a PLD-type controller are to be operated in parallel. We built and used structured testbenches based on the classes supported by UVM for functional verification of the PLD-type controller designed for NPPs. We incorporated a UVM register model into the testbenches in order to increase the controllability and the observability of the DUT(Device Under Test). With the increased testability, we could easily verify the datapaths between I/O ports and the register sets of the DUT, otherwise we had to perform black box tests for the datapaths, which is very cumbersome and time consuming. We were also able to perform constrained random verification very easily and systematically. From the study, we confirmed the various advantages of using the UVM register model in verification such as scalability, reusability and interoperability, and set some design guidelines for verification of the NPP controllers.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.371-380
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• 2007

This paper proposes a new automatic compensation network (ACN) for a system-on-chip (SoC) transceiver. We built a 5 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) with an on-chip ACN using 0.18 ${\mu}m$ SiGe technology. This network is extremely useful for today's radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit devices in a complete RF transceiver environment. The network comprises an RF design-for-testability (DFT) circuit, capacitor mirror banks, and a digital signal processor. The RF DFT circuit consists of a test amplifier and RF peak detectors. The RF DFT circuit helps the network to provide DC output voltages, which makes the compensation network automatic. The proposed technique utilizes output DC voltage measurements and these measured values are translated into the LNA specifications such as input impedance, gain, and noise figure using the developed mathematical equations. The ACN automatically adjusts the performance of the 5 GHz LNA with the processor in the SoC transceiver when the LNA goes out of the normal range of operation. The ACN compensates abnormal operation due to unusual thermal variation or unusual process variation. The ACN is simple, inexpensive and suitable for a complete RF transceiver environment.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.209-216
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• 2011

Recently the design of SoCs(System-on-Chips) in which TCM is embedded for high speed operation increases rapidly. In this paper, a parallel test structure for eDRAM-based TCM embedded in SoCs is proposed. In the presented technique, the MUT (Memory Under Test) is changed to parallel structure and it increases testability of MUT with boundary scan chains. The eDRAM is designed in structure for parallel test so that it can be tested for each modules. Dynamic test can be performed based on input-output data. The proposed techniques are verified their performance by circuits simulation.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.412-420
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• 2008

A new scan partition architecture to reduce both the average and peak power dissipation during scan testing is proposed for low-power embedded systems. In scan-based testing, due to the extremely high switching activity during the scan shift operation, the power consumption increases considerably. In addition, the reduced correlation between consecutive test patterns may increase the power consumed during the capture cycle. In the proposed architecture, only a subset of scan cells is loaded with test stimulus and captured with test responses by freezing the remaining scan cells according to the spectrum of unspecified bits in the test cubes. To optimize the proposed process, a novel graph-based heuristic to partition the scan chain into several segments and a technique to increase the number of don't cares in the given test set have been developed. Experimental results on large ISCAS89 benchmark circuits show that the proposed technique, compared to the traditional full scan scheme, can reduce both the average switching activities and the average peak switching activities by 92.37% and 41.21%, respectively.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.2731-2740
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• 2012

ASIC(application specific integrated circuit) process is a set of various technologies for fabricating a chip. Generally there have been many researches for RTL design, synthesis, floor plan & routing, low power scheme, clock tree synthesis, and testability which are widely researched in recent. In this paper we propose a new methodology of power strap routing in basis of design experience and experiment. First the power strap for vertical VDD and VSS and horizontal VDD and VSS is routed, and then after the problems which are generated in this process are analyzed, we propose a new process for resolving them. For this, the strap guide is inserted to protect the unnecessary strap routing and dumped for next steps. Next the unnecessary power straps which are generated the first inserting process are removed, and the pre-routing is performed for the macro cells. Finally the resultant power straps are routed using the dumped routing guide. Through the proposed process we identified the efficient and stable route of the power straps.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2004

The state assignment for a finite state machine greatly affects the delay, area, power dissipation, and testabilities of the sequential circuits. In order to improve the testabilities and power consumption, a new state assignment technique . based on m-block partition is introduced in this paper. By the m-block partition algorithm, the dependencies among groups of state variables are minimized and switching activity is further reduced by assigning the codes of the states in the same group considering the state transition probability among the states. In the sequel the length and number of feedback cycles are reduced with minimal switching activity on state variables. It is inherently contradictory problem to optimize the testability and power consumption simultaneously, however our new state assignment technique is able to achieve high fault coverage with less number of scan nfp flops by reducing the number of feedback cycles while the power consumption is kept low upon the low switching activities among state variables. Experiment shows drastic improvement in testabilities and power dissipation for benchmark circuits.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.28-39
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• 2007

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.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.322-329
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• 2000

BIST(Built-in Self Test) has been considered as the most promising DFT(design-for-test) scheme for the present and future test strategy. The most serious problem in applying BIST(Built-in Self Test) into a large circuit is the excessive increase in test time. This paper is focused on this problem. We proposed a new BIST construction scheme which uses a parallel divide-and-conquer method. The circuit division is performed with respect to some internal nodes called test points. The test points are selected by considering the nodal connectivity of the circuit rather than the testability of each node. The test patterns are generated by only one linear feedback shift register(LFSR) and they are shared by all the divided circuits. Thus, the test for each divided circuit is performed in parallel. Test responses are collected from the test point as well as the primary outputs. Even though the divide-and-conquer scheme is used and test patterns are generated in one LFSR, the proposed scheme does not lose its pseudo-exhaustive property. We proposed a selection procedure to find the test points and it was implemented with C/C++ language. Several example circuits were applied to this procedure and the results showed that test time was reduced upto 1/2151 but the increase in the hardware overhead or the delay increase was not much high. Because the proposed scheme showed a tendency that the increasing rates in hardware overhead and delay overhead were less than that in test time reduction as the size of circuit increases, it is expected to be used efficiently for large circuits as VLSI and ULSI.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.15-24
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• 2009

This paper proposes an effective low power BIST architecture using the pattern mapping method for 100% fault coverage and the transition freezing method for making high correlative low power patterns. When frozen patterns are applied to a circuit, it begins to find a great number of faults at first. However, patterns have limitations of achieving 100% fault coverage due to random pattern resistant faults. In this paper, those faults are covered by the pattern mapping method using the patterns generated by an ATPG and the useless patterns among frozen patterns. Throughout the scheme, we have reduced an amount of applied patterns and test time compared with the transition freezing method, which leads to low power dissipation.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.1177-1184
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• 1999

본 논문에서는 스캔플립프롭 선택 시간이 짧고 높은 고장 검출률(fault coverage)을 얻을 수 있는 새로운 부분스캔 설계 기술을 제안한다. 순차회로에서 테스트패턴 생성을 용이하게 하기 위하여 완전스캔 및 부분스캔 설계 기술이 널리 이용되고 있다. 스캔 설계로 인한 추가영역을 최소화 하고 최대의 고장 검출률을 목표로 하는 부분스캔 기술은 크게 구조분석과 테스트 가능도(testability)에 의한 설계 기술로 나누어 볼 수 있다. 구조분석에 의한 부분스캔은 짧은 시간에 스캔플립프롭을 선택할 수 있지만 고장 검출률은 낮다. 반면 테스트 가능도에 의한 부분스캔은 구조분석에 의한 부분스캔보다 스캔플립프롭의 선택 시간이 많이 걸리는 단점이 있지만 높은 고장 검출률을 나타낸다. 본 논문에서는 구조분석에 의한 부분스캔과 테스트 가능도에 의한 부분스캔 설계 기술의 장단점을 비교.분석하여 통합함으로써 스캔플립프롭 선택 시간을 단축하고 고장 검출률을 높일 수 있는 새로운 부분스캔 설계 기술을 제안한다. 실험결과 대부분의 ISCAS89 벤치마크 회로에서 스캔플립프롭 선택 시간은 현격히 감소하였고 비교적 높은 고장 검출률을 나타내었다.Abstract This paper provides a new partial scan design technique which not only reduces the time for selecting scan flip-flops but also improves fault coverage. To simplify the problem of the test pattern generation in the sequential circuits, full scan and partial scan design techniques have been widely adopted. The partial scan techniques which aim at minimizing the area overhead while maximizing the fault coverage, can be classified into the techniques based on structural analysis and testabilities. In case of the partial scan by structural analysis, it does not take much time to select scan flip-flops, but fault coverage is low. On the other hand, although the partial scan by testabilities generally results in high fault coverage, it requires more time to select scan flip-flops than the former method. In this paper, we analyzed and unified the strengths of the techniques by structural analysis and by testabilities. The new partial scan design technique not only reduces the time for selecting scan flip-flops but also improves fault coverage. Test results demonstrate the remarkable reduction of the time to select the scan flip-flops and high fault coverage in most ISCAS89 benchmark circuits.