A Plug and Play Digital ABIST Controller for Analog Sensors in Secure Devices

Overview & Synopsis

Secure devices embed analog sensors in order to measure some physical/environmental parameters which can alter its behavior such as temperature, voltage and electromagnetic field. To ensure the device security all along its lifetime, it is necessary to rely on those analog sensors. Consequently, test solutions must be designed and proceed at each step of the system life cycle, considering inherent constraints of each cycle, i.e., absent or defective software in the chip or chip in user’s hand for example. In this paper, we present a plug and play digital ABIST controller which allows to run external or internal autonomous built-in self-test phases on a temperature sensor used as case study. The external test mode is fully compliant with the IEEE Std. 1149.1 while the internal test one is controlled by the embedded CPU through a system bus.