Temperature and Voltage Measurement for Field Test Using an Aging-Tolerant Monitor

Measuring temperature and voltage (T&V) in a current VLSI is very important in guaranteeing its reliability, because a large variation of temperature or voltage in field will reduce a delay margin and makes the chip behavior unreliable. This paper proposes a novel method of T&V measurement, which can be used for variety of applications, such as field test, online test, or hot-spot monitoring. The method counts frequencies of more than one ring oscillator (RO), which composes an aging-tolerant monitor. Then, the T&V are derived from the frequencies using a multiple regression analysis. To improve the accuracy of measurement, three techniques of an optimal selection of RO types, their calibration, and hierarchical calculation are newly introduced. In order to make sure the proposed method, circuit simulation in 180-, 90-, and 45-nm CMOS technologies is performed. In the 180-nm CMOS technology, the temperature accuracy is within 0.99 °C, and the voltage accuracy is within 4.17 mV. Furthermore, some experimental results using fabricated test chips with 180-nm CMOS technology confirm its feasibility.