Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

BiCMOS circuits mixed with CMOS and bipolar technologies show peculiar fault characteristics that are different from those of other technoloties. It has been reported that because most of short faults in BiCMOS circuits cause logically intermediate level at outputs, current monitoring method is requ...

BiCMOS circuits mixed with CMOS and bipolar technologies show peculiar fault characteristics that are different from those of other technoloties. It has been reported that because most of short faults in BiCMOS circuits cause logically intermediate level at outputs, current monitoring method is required to detect these faluts. However current monitoring requires additional hardware capabilities in the testing equipment and evaluation of test responses can be more difficult. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of faults in BiCMOS circuit together with their test methods and propose a new design technique for testability to detect the faults by logic monitoring. An effective method to detect the transition delay faults induced by performance degradation by the open or short fault of bipolar transistors in BiCMOS circuits is presented. The proposed design-for-testability methods for BiCMOS circuits are confirmed by the SPICE simulation.