Integrated Temperature Sensors for On-Line Thermal Monitoring of Microelectronic Structures

Built-in temperature sensors increase the system reliability by predicting eventual faults caused by excessive chip temperatures. In this paper, simple and efficient built-in temperature sensors for the on-line thermal monitoring of microelectronics structures are introduced. The proposed temperature sensors produce a signal oscillating at a frequency proportional to the temperature of the microelectronics structure and therefore they are compatible to the oscillation-test method. The oscillation-test method is a low-cost and robust test method for mixed-signal integrated circuits based on transforming the circuit under test (CUT) to an oscillator. This paper presents the design and detailed characteristics of the sensors proposed based on the CMOS 1.2 µm technology parameters of Mitel S.C.C. Extensive post-layout simulations show that the oscillation frequency is very sensitive to temperature variations. The sensors proposed require very small power dissipation and silicon area.