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Technology scaling trends led to an aggressive increase of SRAM cell sensitivity to process variation. More accurate and non-invasive methodologies must be considered to provide detailed bit-cell characterization focusing on writability margin. This work proposes a new metric using regular read/write operations based on the estimation of the maximum word-line voltage drop during write operations....
SRAM cell sensitivity to process variation increases aggressively with technology scaling trends. Long-term aging parameter variability degrades 6T-SRAM cells performance in the nanometre era. More accurate and non-invasive methodologies must be provided to extend the free-failure period for high reliability systems. This paper proposes a Word-Line Voltage Margin estimator to observe SRAM performance...
Embedded SRAM yield dominates the overall ASIC yield, therefore the methodologies centered on improving SRAM cell stability will be introduced in the design as a mandatory. Word-line voltage modulation has showed that it is possible to improve cell stability during access operations. The high variability of physical and performance parameters introduce the need to adopt adaptable solutions to adequately...
SRAM cell stability analysis is typically based on Static Noise Margin (SNM) evaluation when in hold mode, although memory errors may also occur during read operations. Given that SNM varies with each cell operation, a thorough analysis of SNM in read mode is required. In this paper we investigate the SNM of OAM cells during write operations. The Word-Line Voltage modulation is proposed as an alternative...
The main contribution of this work is providing a static and dynamic enhancement of bit-cell stability for low-power SRAM in nanometer technologies. We consider a wide layout topology without bends in diffusion layers for the nanometer SRAM cell design to minimize the impact of process variations. The design restrictions imposed by such a nanometer SRAM cell design prevents from applying traditional...
Driving assistance systems provide either safety or comfort functions. Such systems must evaluate the state of the world and take necessary actions. A preliminary step for evaluating the state of the world is to detect, track and classify scene objects. The classification step becomes especially important in complex urban traffic scenarios. In such scenarios the sensors of choice are vision based,...
There are many approaches to pedestrian detection in collision avoidance systems depending on the sensors (visible light, thermal infrared, radar, laser scanner) used for acquiring the data and the features (depth, shape, motion) used for detection. In this paper we present a method for shape based pedestrian detection in traffic scenes using a stereo vision system for acquiring the image frames and...
This paper presents the specifications and architecture for a stereovision sensor to be used in intersection assistance. The intersection problem imposes a wide field of view, reasonable accuracy for the typical intersection length, and fast response time. The image and 3D data provided by the low level routines are used to generate two kinds of environment descriptions - an unstructured description,...
In this work we analyze the effects of radiation-induced transient pulses on 6T SRAM cells operating in read mode. The critical charge of a memory cell during read mode is lower than in hold mode. For 1 to 0 upsets, this reduction reaches a factor x 1.5 for events produced by alpha particles; this factor is even higher for longer induced current pulses. The impact of events propagated through the...
In this paper, a sequential test technique is proposed to test a RF front-end receiver. With this technique the test circuitry can be reused by the receiver building blocks.The method is suitable to be fully integrated on-chip. Moreover, the test area overhead has been kept low by using the receiver LO in the test circuitry. Therefore the test circuitry required to generate the test stimuli are an...
We analyze two complementary radiation-hardening techniques for 6T SRAM memories compatible with structured layouts. One approach relies on the individual selection of the threshold voltage of each of the four transistors forming the cross-coupled inverters of the SRAM cell. The other one is based on the modification of the widths of all PMOS or all NMOS transistors of the cell. The first technique...
A preliminary step for many computer vision algorithms is the estimation of camera motion. In this paper we describe and compare the results of three algorithms for camera motion estimation, which require various degrees of knowledge about the camera(s) used and the scenario. The first algorithm uses a single uncalibrated camera and it is useful for applications such as content based image retrieval...
This paper presents the circuitry to implement a built-in self test (BiST) strategy for a RF receiver. Using this test strategy fault detection is performed on a LNA. The considered faults are parametrical variations of some LNA elements, and soft opens at selected nodes. After simulations we discuss the detectability margin of these faults. As a rule of thumb, the parametrical faults detectability...
A heavy ion radiation test has been performed to evaluate the SEU sensitivity on a mixed-mode ASIC. We present the results obtained when the Triple Voting Registers used in the digital block of the ASIC are irradiated with heavy ions.
This paper presents an implementation of a 3D environment reconstruction system, using trinocular (3 camera) stereovision. The system does not use rectification, in order to improve precision. Sub-pixel accuracy correlation is used. Feature extraction and correlation use MMX and SSE2 optimizations. Reconstruction correctitude tests were conducted using both synthetically generated images and camera...
Two different CMOS circuits has been used to check the predictive oscillation based test (POBT) approach, combined with supply current monitoring technique. These circuits are a two stage op amp and a biquad filter composed by two transconductance amplifiers (OTA). The combination of both techniques has given excellent results in predicting the main performance parameters of the circuits as DC gain,...
In this paper we present a new tool to improve analog circuits test. This tool is based on measuring not only frequency or voltage, but also the transferred charge during a period while the circuit under test is configured as an oscillator. To prove the technique, fault diagnosis and parameter prediction have been tried. Simulations have been performed on an opamp considering process variations in...
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