An on-chip SiGe HBT characterization circuit for use in self-healing RF systems

Author

Howard, Duane C. ; England, Troy D. ; Lourenco, Nelson E. ; Cardoso, Adilson S. ; Cressler, John D.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

Sept. 30 2013-Oct. 3 2013

Firstpage

203

Lastpage

206

Abstract

An on-chip device characterization circuit that extracts the current gain of a SiGe HBT test transistor, and which can be useful in the context of various “self-healing” RF circuits and systems, is presented. The characterization circuit includes built-in temperature compensation that enables accurate measurement of the current gain of the test device over a wide temperature range. The device characterization circuit can also be used to measure variations in the current gain of the test device due to process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations, as well as other phenomena that can potentially degrade performance.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; built-in self test; compensation; electric current measurement; heterojunction bipolar transistors; semiconductor device testing; PVT variations; SiGe; SiGe HBT test transistor; built-in temperature compensation; current gain; on-chip device characterization circuit; process voltage and temperature variations; self-healing RF circuits; test device; Current measurement; Gain measurement; Radio frequency; Semiconductor device measurement; Silicon germanium; Temperature distribution; Temperature measurement; BIST; HBT; PVT; SiGe; self-healing circuit;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), 2013 IEEE

Conference_Location

Bordeaux

ISSN

1088-9299

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0126-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BCTM.2013.6798176

Filename

6798176