Application of dynamic supply current monitoring to testing mixed-signal circuits

This paper applies the time-domain testing technique and compares the effectiveness of transient voltage and dynamic power supply current measurements in detecting faults in CMOS mixed-signal circuits. The voltage and supply current (i_DDT) measurements are analyzed by three methods to detect the presence of a fault, and to establish which measurement achieves higher confidence in the detection. Catastrophic, soft and stuck-at single fault conditions were introduced to the circuit-under-test (CUT). The time-domain technique tests a mixed-signal CUT in a unified fashion, thereby eliminating the need to partition the CUT into separate analogue and digital modules.