Refined Self-calibration of an Inductorless Low-noise Amplifier with Non-intrusive Circuit.

Alternate test can dramatically reduce the cost of circuit testing. In one type of alternate test, copies of parts of the circuit and process-control monitors (PCM) are used as non-intrusive sensors for calibration algorithms, which can be time-consuming. A straightforward design procedure for process-aware sensors is proposed and proved efficient, and calibration results with process-aware sensors of different sizes are compared. Device size variation and process variation were found to have an impact on the mapping accuracy of the model. In addition, the results were found to degrade with a decrease in sensor size. Specifically, the low-noise amplifier (LNA) pass ratios with the largest sensor size were 3% ~ 4.5% less than the ratios obtained without the prediction error of alternate test. When the size of sensors was reduced by up to 30 times, the LNA pass ratio dropped by 5% ~ 7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]