Improving the testability of switched-capacitor filters

A design-for-test methodology for SC filters is presented, based on an architecture using some additional circuitry and providing extra capabilities for both off-and on-line tests. The approach uses a comparison (voting) mechanism to indicate whether or not two copies of a filter element (a biquad, for instance) have a similar response during their actual operation. The design and implementation of a few filter examples are included to assess the potential usefulness of this new approach.