Built-in Self Test of RF Transceiver SoCs: from Signal Chain to RF Synthesizers

Built-in self test techniques for local oscillator phase noise, RF front-end circuits, baseband building blocks and transceiver loop-back are described. CMOS implementation of integrated RF test components, including RF detectors and phase discriminators are introduced. These devices eliminate the need for expensive external test equipment. The presented test strategies can also be used at wafer-level for fault diagnosis, localization and yield estimation. Silicon characterization results verifying most of these techniques are provided.