On proving the efficiency of alternative RF tests

Abstract

The deployment of alternative, low-cost RF test methods in industry has been, to date, rather limited. This is due to the potentially impaired ability to identify device pass/fail labels when departing from traditional specification test. By relying on alternative tests, pass/fail labels must be derived indirectly through new test limits defined for the alternative tests, which may incur error in the form of test escapes or yield loss. Clearly, estimating these test metrics as early as possible in the test development process is key to the success of an alternative test approach. In this work, we employ a test metrics estimation technique based on non-parametric kernel density estimation to obtain such early estimates, and, for the first time, demonstrate a real-world case study of test metric estimation efficiency at parts-per-million levels. To achieve this, we employ a set of more than 1 million RF devices fabricated by Texas Instruments, which have been tested with both traditional specification tests as well as alternative, low-cost On-chip RF Built-in Tests, or “ORBiTs”.