Abstract
As the process technology enters the deep sub-micron era, the test cost of the semiconductor keeps increasing due to the more and more complicated functions in an integrated circuit, with higher and higher operating speed. High-end tester is expensive because of its higher test accuracy. Many technologies, e.g., DFT (design-for-test) tester with embedded test features and open-architecture tester, have been investigated to cope with these urgent testing issues. However, the limitations in these traditional ATEs (automatic test equipments) still exist. Recently, the concept of the wireless test system have been developed. Comparing with the traditional test methodology with contacted probing, the overall test cost can be reduced dramatically. In this thesis, we present a 36x36 prototype of the wireless test system, with improved communication protocol and circuitry. In addition, a mobile version has also been implemented, supporting heterogeneous core tests. With the experiences of the working prototypes, we also cooperate with others to integrate our communication components into a single device under test (DUT), including the memory cores under test, memory built-in self-test (MBIST), wireless test wrapper, data exchange unit (DEU), media access control (MAC) unit, baseband unit, wireless receiver, transmitter, and multi-clock generator. The test chip has been implemented and fabricated. Based on the physical characteristics of the implementations, a system-level model of the next-generation multicast wireless test protocol has been constructed. Several core test technologies, such as MBIST, logic scan (LSCAN), and UMC-SCAN (universal multicast scan) have been evaluated and analyzed using our system-level simulation. With our system-level simulation, system bottleneck can be identified and alleviated by the proposed test approach to validate the test responses with the golden ones inside the wireless test wrapper. The rapid design exploration of our wireless test system makes the trade-off between the test performance and cost very efficiently.