A BIST Scheme for RF Power Amplifiers

Abstract

One can find today system-on-chip devices comprising also radio-frequency blocks. These highly integrated circuits raise extraordinary challenges for testing, jeopardizing the low cost requirements associated often to these products. A built-in self test scheme for RF power ampli- fiers based on a polynomial fitting approach is proposed here, which takes advantage of the existing local oscillator, up-conversion mixer, and pre-driver, allowing for low area overhead and performance degradation. Simulation and experimental results for gain and linearity (1 dB compression and third order interception points) obtained with a GaAs distributed amplifier are presented which confirm the validity of the method. The BIST scheme proposed for implementing this method on-chip is then described, together with preliminary simulation results.