Design and implementation of low-cost multitone signal generation systems

The generation of multitone signals for use in built-in self-test (BIST) mixed circuits is challenging due to requirements such as resource usage and testing time. Generating offline the complete waveform and storing it for posterior playback is not an option in many applications. This paper describes a multitone signal generation design methodology that allows to choose proper parameters for the BIST circuit that will create the multitone signal on-the-fly. Besides, the work contributes with a new method for generation of multitone signals that is based on successively addition of single-tones signals and then compares with other two approaches using FPGA-based implementations. The results validate the design methodology and show that the proposed serial architecture significantly outperforms the others architectures in the context of on-the-fly signal generation.