One-Shot Non-Intrusive Calibration Against Process Variations for Analog/RF Circuits

A calibration mechanism is often desired in analog/RF circuits that are designed in advance process nodes which exhibit large process variation, so as to recover yield loss and obtain the best possible trade-off between performances. In this paper, we present a calibration approach based on embedded sensors that has several appealing attributes. Specifically, it is virtually applicable to any circuit, the calibration mechanism is totally non-intrusive and, thereby, it does not degrade the performances of the circuit, and the calibration is performed in one-shot requiring a single test step, thus the calibration time is kept at a minimum. The proposed calibration approach is demonstrated experimentally on a 65 nm RF power amplifier based on fabricated chips from two corner wafers and a typical wafer.