With increased and varied performance demands, it is essential that complex multi-standard radio/systems coexist on a same chip. To have cost and performance benefits, these analog/RF systems are implemented in scaled nanometer nodes. At these nodes, the high level of variability in process variations is making the task of manufacturing high fidelity systems a challenge leading to yield and reliability issues. Hence, in the post-manufacturing phase, test and diagnosis steps are critical to identify the cause and effect of the process variations. Further, intelligent post-manufacturing tuning techniques are required to correct the effect of process variations on analog/RF systems. In this work, a die-level concurrent test and diagnosis approach using optimized measurements obtained in high volume manufacturing environment is proposed for analog/RF circuits. Such a simultaneous test and diagnosis methodology enables monitoring parametric process shifts and providing rapid feedback to the fab to minimize or prevent yield loss. In the case of devices that are continuously operating in the field, an efficient on-line diagnosis approach has been developed to perform reliability related prognosis. For advanced RF technologies such as MIMO-OFDM systems, a rapid system-level testing scheme is presented that performs concurrent testing of the multiple RF chains. Depending on the availability of the computational resources and system tuning knobs, different low-cost methodologies for post-manufacture tuning or self-healing of RF SISO/MIMO systems are developed. These include faster digital monitoring and tuning techniques, on-chip tuning techniques using digital logic that enables die-level self-tuning, and DSP-based power conscious iterative techniques for SISO/MIMO RF systems. An adaptive power-performance tuning technique is developed for those devices that have a post-manufacture power consumption value that is more than the acceptable limit. These intelligent post-manufacturing techniques result in reduced manufacturing cost, improved yield, and reliability of analog/RF systems.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/47594 |
| Date | 26 March 2013 |
| Creators | Devarakond , Shyam Kumar |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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