Calibrating On-chip Thermal Sensors in Integrated Circuits: A Design-for-Calibration Approach

• Published in: Journal of electronic testing Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 711 - 721
• Main Authors: Yao, Chunhua, Saluja, Kewal K., Ramanathan, Parmesh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-12-2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acceptability; CAE) and Design; Calibration; Circuits and Systems; Computer-Aided Engineering (CAD; Design; Drift; Electrical Engineering; Electronics; Engineering; Integrated circuits; Monitors; Robustness; Sensors; Thermal energy; Sensor calibration; Thermal sensor; Design-for-calibration
• ISSN: 0923-8174; 1573-0727
• DOI: 10.1007/s10836-011-5253-4

With the scaling of technology, thermal issues have started to adversely affect reliability, performance, and robustness of integrated circuits. As a result, many recent research papers have focused on the use of embedded thermal sensors to monitor the temperature profile within the IC and manage the on-chip resources to keep the temperatures within acceptable limits. However, due to increasing process variations and parameter drifts, temperature measurements by these thermal sensors may not be accurate unless these on-chip sensors are calibrated before shipping the devices to the users. Existing calibration methods are either time-consuming or assume that the sensors do not require calibration for they use very large area which makes them insensitive to variations and drifts. In this paper, we propose a design-for-calibration (DFC) approach for calibrating the embedded thermal sensors in the manufacturing environment. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of our approach. The impact of uncertainties in parameters on the accuracy of calibration is also investigated in the paper.