Aging Compensation in a Class-A High-Frequency Amplifier with DC Temperature Measurements

Abstract

One of the threats to nanometric CMOS analog circuit reliability is circuit performance degradation due to transistor aging. To extend circuit operating life, the bias of the main devices within the circuit must be adjusted while the aging degradation process affects them by using a monitor circuit that tracks the evolution of the circuit performance. In this paper, we propose the use of DC temperature measurements in the proximity of the circuit to perform the monitoring of circuit performance degradation and as an observable variable to adjust the bias of the main devices to restore the degraded performance to the original values. To this end, we present experimental results obtained from nine samples of a standard CMOS integrated circuit containing a high-frequency class-A power amplifier and a differential temperature sensor. After accelerated aging, the gain of the amplifier is degraded up to 50%. We propose two different procedures to perform DC temperature measurements that allow tracking of the amplifier gain degradation due to aging and, by uniquely observing temperature readings, automatically set a new bias for the amplifier devices that restores the original amplifier gain. Whereas one of the procedures is able to restore the gain up to a certain limit, the second allows full gain restoration.