Resistive RF Injection Probe test Method

Jean-luc Levant1, Jean-Baptiste Gros2, Geneviève Duchamp2,Mohamed Ramdani3

1
Atmel Nantes SA, route de Gachet - 44306 Nantes France – jean-luc.levant@atmel.com
2
IMS laboratory, University of Bordeaux, 351 Cours de la Libération – 33400 TALENCE France
jean-baptiste.gros@ims-bordeaux.fr – genevieve.duchamp@ims-bordeaux.fr
3
ESEO – LATTIS – 4, rue Merlet-de-la-Boulaye – B.P. 30926 – 49009 Angers France
mohamed.ramdani@eseo.fr

Abstract — This paper deals with test methods involved to
characterize the susceptibility of integrated circuits. It
presents a new test method called “Resistive RF Injection
Probe“(RFIP). It uses a fast digital oscilloscope and a
resistive RF injection probe. They are used to measure the
immunity parameters and to characterize the susceptibility
of the ICs, not only by the power criteria but by the other
criteria such as the current and the voltage injected and the
impedance value where the disturbance is applied. As an
example, this novel test method is applied to an ADC
embedded in a microcontroller.
INTRODUCTION
hand, it is important for the silicon designer to understand
where the immunity limits come from. The way explores
in this paper is to consider it exists some critical
interference coupling paths in DUT leading to disturb its
electrical behavioral. As it is shown in figure 1, these
coupling paths fall into three impedance categories: low,
medium and high. Generally speaking an electronic
device is built around several sub-electronic features.
Their impedances can be ranked into high or medium or
low impedance characteristics.
DUT
Vdd iDut3 iDut2 iDut1

A group of several international standards are currently VDisturbance

available today to characterize the susceptibility of the
ZVdd High Medium Low
integrated circuits (ICs) which are referenced with the Impedance Impedance Impedance
- Power-Supply Network
- Low and medium IOs
vDut
IEC62132-x project number. Some of them are dedicated - High impedance
input:
Xtal oscillator, Reset,
- High speed and high
drive Ios.
- ….

to the RF continuous wave (CW) disturbances,[ 1] and [ Vdd

ADC input, PLL, ...

2]. The power is mainly the criteria to characterize the Vss

susceptibility. Classical techniques and test equipments
such as spectrum analyzer, RF and fast transient
generator, power amplifier and power-meters are required
in such tests. This novel test method proposed in this
paper use non conventional measurement equipments.
Indeed a fast oscilloscope is used to acquire and
characterize the immunity parameters. This solution
offers several acquisition channels and it makes it
possible to measure one or more electrical parameters at
the same time. As an example, the RFPI test needs at
least two channels: the first one measures the injected
current into the device under test (DUT) and the second
one measures the level applied to the DUT. Thus, the
impedance and the power criterion are determined by
computing the current and the level measured previously.
The others oscilloscope channels can be used to monitor
or to measure others parameters. The injection probe is
built around a calibrated resistor used to measure the
injected current, a series capacitor to block the DC and a
chock inductance when the signal under test has to be
biased. A post-processing program manages the test and
controls all the equipments involved in the RFIP test.
1. RFIP TEST METHOD MOTIVATION
The conventional DPI test method allows to measure and
to fully characterize the immunity level of a DUT. This
approach gives no detail about the origin of the immunity
limits because the DUT is seen as a black box. In other
Fig1. Some internal features of the DUT are low, medium
and high impedances.
In the figure 1, the magnitude of the current iDutn (n=1,2
or 3) is related to the impedance involved. In others
words, when the disturbance (VDistrubance) is applied to
DUT, the low impedance path couples more current than
the medium and high impedance paths. The figure 2
plots a typical example of the impedance seen across the
VDD/VSS pins of a DUT.
|ZVddVss|
High Z MediumZ LowZ
1KΩ→100KΩ 10Ω→1KΩ <10Ω
f
Fig 2. Example of range of impedances.
Inversely a high impedance path is sensitive when the
voltage varies a less sensitive when the current varies in a
low dynamic range.
The main idea of this paper that it is possible to
determine the internal coupling path involved in the
immunity limit by observing which electrical parameters The RF voltage applied to the DUT is measured by the
is more representative of the immunity problem. This is probe P2. Thus, the input impedance of the DUT is
why the voltage, current and impedance are measured computed thanks to the next expression (2).
and taken to characterize the immunity characteristics. vD ut
zD ut = (2)
The injected power in another key parameter but doesn’t iD ut
gives any information about the coupling path nature With vDut is the RF voltage applied to DUT.
(inductive or capacitive).
The injected active power is then computed using the
2. RFIP TEST METHOD DESCRIPTION following expression (3)
Figure 3 depicts the RFIP test setup. An RFIP test board vD ut ⋅ vD ut * (3)
PD ut =
includes the device under test, the RFIP probes, the r e a l( z D u t )
power-supplies and the communication interface. In this With vDut* is the complex conjugate of the vDut
study the DUT manages the communication with the voltage.
serial link of the software tool (RFIP Interface Tool)
running in the PC. The RFIP setup the ADC modes and In case of the DUT needs to be biased to operate
the configurations, it starts the ADC conversions and properly, a biasing cell is added to the DC RFIP probe.
receives the conversion results and then it performs the
processing to check the ADC immunity.

RFIP Interface RS232

Tool
G PIB

R F G e nerator R F A m p lif ie r P o w e r - S u p p ly
Fig. 5 DC RFIP probe with a bias cell.
+3.3v_Num
+3.3v_Ana

D PI Probe The C1 capacitor avoids the DC component going into

the RF generator. C2 is the decoupling network which
O s c illo s c o p e offers low impedance to the RF signal. The ZChock is a
chock inductor used to avoid the RF signal to pass
A T M e g a 3 2 M 1 S u s c e p t i b il it y T e s t B o a r d
D B9
directly to the general power-supply. A de-embedding
Fig. 3 Setup used for applying the RFIP test. process is performed in order to remove all the parasitic
components and to determine accurately the
The measurements are performed by two differentials susceptibility parameters.
probes connected to a fast (20GHz) and high bandwidth
oscilloscope (4GHz). The CW disturbance is injected by 2.2 Direct coupling mode
the RF generator and an external amplifier if it is needed. Figure 6 shows the electrical structure in the case where
2.1 Principles of operation DUT has no DC component. The P6248 differential
probes are characterized with a Vector Network Analyzer
Figure 4 shows the principle of the RFIP measurement. (VNA) and then they are modeled by a two port matrix
Thanks to a RF generator, the RFIP probe, zP, injects a for the probe PA and one port matrix for the probe PB.
CW disturbance to the DUT. A differential probe (P1)
measures v1. Then the injected current is computed with
equation (1):
v1
iDut = (1)
zP
With v1, differential voltage drop measured across zP.
zP, the RFIP probe impedance.
Fig. 6 Electrical scheme for a direct coupling.

Based on that scheme, some equations can be written.

The first equation (4) defined the two port matrix of the
probe A:
v0 = zA11 ⋅ i1 + zA12 ⋅ i2 
  (4)
v2 = zA21 ⋅ i1 + zA22 ⋅ i2

Fig. 4 Two parameters are measured in the RFIP test.

The voltage v0 is not measured but it can be computed vDut
from (5). iDut = i6 − i7 = i6 − (18)
ZChock
v0 = v1 + v2 (5)
vDut
zDut = (19)
The current i3 can be computed by knowing (6) and (7). iDut
v1 2.4 FFT use
v1 = zP ⋅ i3 (6), i3 = (7)
zP This technique is dedicated to the RF CW disturbances.
The current i4 is then computed from equation (8) and The measurements are performed in time domain by the
(9). oscilloscope equipment and a fast Fourier transform
i4 = i3 − i2 (8) (FFT) converts them in the frequency domain. Also all
v1 zA22 zA12 the usual cautions have to be taken before using the FFT
i4 = − ⋅ v0 + ⋅ v2 (9)
zP ∆A ∆A in order to limit spectral linkage. The oscilloscope has a
finite storage memory, thus the number of signal periods
With: ∆A = zA11 ⋅ zA22 − zA12 ⋅ zA21 stored is generally a non integer number. This causes a
discontinuity between the ends of the record and the
The current flowing through PB is then computed using spectral linkage in the whole Nyquist frequency
the equation (10): bandwidth. Several techniques can limit this linkage. As
v2 for examples, a flat-top window can be applied before
i5 = (10) computing the FFT. This window gives the best
zB11
amplitude accuracy. A Hanning window can be used as
well and the zeros padding process can be added to
Finally the three basic immunity parameters are given the
increase the amplitude accuracy.
equations (11), (12) and (13).
v2 v2 3. RFIP applied to an analog to digital converter
zDut = (11), iDut = (12)
i4 − i5 zDut
3.1 Description
vDut = v2 (13)
This technique is used to evaluate the number of bits lost
2.3 Capacitive coupling mode
of an Analog Digital Converter embedded on a
Figure 7 shows the electrical structure in the case where microcontroller and while a RF disturbance is applied.
the DUT needs a bias. In that case a capacitive coupling Figure 8 depicts the test setup used to measure the ENOB
is required in order to block the DC and it avoids the DC (Effective Number Of Bits) versus the disturbance
passing through the probes. applied on the analog power pin (AVcc) of the converter.
The AC RFIP probe is used to supply the 3Vof the ADC
and to apply the RF CW disturbance.

Fig. 7 Electrical scheme for a capacitive coupling.

A set of equations are written to resolve the immunity

parameters. 50Ω

Substituting (4) ,
v1 + v2 ZA11
i2 = − ⋅ i1 (13)
ZA12 ZA12 Fig 8. RFIP used to test an embedded ADC.
v2 ZA22
i1 = − ⋅ i2 (14) The RF disturbance is injected into the RF input for a
ZA21 ZA21
1MHz to 100MHz frequency range. The input power is
Let’s arrange (13) and (14) scan from -30dBm up to 15dBm.The LCon is the
interconnection between the RF input and the Avcc pin.
ZA11 − ZA21 ZA21
i2 = ⋅ v2 − ⋅ v1 (15) The LCon length has to be less one ten of the wavelength
∆A ∆A of the maximum frequency in order to be modeled with
Substituting (15) and (8) the RLC lumped elements. If the relative dielectric
v2 constant of the PCB is equal to εr=4.5, at 100MHz the
i6 = i4 − (16)
zB11 wavelength is equal to:
Then, 300 ⋅ 106 1
vDut = v2 − ZC1 ⋅ i6 (17) ( )
λ m = ⋅ = 1.41m
f
(20)
εr
The LCon length is less than 5cm which is much less
than 14.1cm. The v1 and v2 are the voltages measured Thus, in this example, the ADC is considered as immune
by the differential scope probes. The iDut (current) , vDut if the conversion result is within the number of bit range
(voltage), zDut (impedance) and PDut (power) are the 9.13bit ± 0.05 .
parameters used to characterize the ADC immunity. The
3.3 RFIP test results
Figure 9 shows the model of the RFIP probe used to
compute the immunity parameters. zDut is the impedance A 0dBm power is applied into the RF input. The results
of the DUT. of the RFIP tests are expressed by using the iDut, vDut,
zDut and PDut immunity parameters. Figures 12 to 15
10Ω 29Ω plot the results for each parameter. The ENOB is
superimposed on each figure to better analyze at which
Z50Ω
frequencies the degradation occurs. The min and max
deviation as well as the mean value are also plotted. It is
0.1Ω
1928Ω clear that the immunity is low in the 2.5MHz to 35MHz
frequency range.
49.8Ω

0.1Ω

Fig. 9 RFIP test setup.

Figure 10 and 11 show a quite good correlation between

the measurement and the RFIP model for an open and 10
ohms loads.

Figure 12. zDut.

Fig. 10 Zin correlation with an open load.

Figure 13. PDut.

Fig. 11 Zin correlation with a 10 ohms load.

3.2 Immunity criterion
The immunity criterion is defined as the number of
conversion bit lost during a conversion and it is evaluated Figure 14. iDut.
with equation (21):
SNR − 1.76
ENOB = (21)
6.02
The characterization of the ENOB criteria is determined
from the measurements of the intrinsic performance of
the ADC. It includes the quantification noise due to the
conversion process as well as the intrinsic noise due to
the internal activities of the microcontroller. So the mean
and the standard deviation are measured by processing
100 ADC conversions giving the following results: Figure 15. vDut.

Figures 10 to 13 show different views to the ADC

• Mean number of conversion bit = 9.13 bit
susceptibility parameters. It demonstrates clearly the
• 3 times the standard deviation = 0.05bit
classical power criterion is nearly constant in the
frequency band where the ADC is susceptible. An other
way is to characterize the immunity by the zDut, iDut,
vDut and pDut parameters. If zDut is lower than ZRfip
(170Ω), the conversion result is not longer within the
specification. The maximum injected iRfip has to be less
than 2mA, the maximum conducted voltage has to be less
30mV and the maximum injected power has to be less
-11dBm.

The table below resumes the immunity criterion for an

input power equal to 0dBm.
pRfip vRfip iRfip zRfip
<-11dBm < 30mV < 2mA > 170Ω

4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a novel immunity test technique has been
discussed. As an example an ADC RFIP test has been
presented. It shows that it is easy to compute and display
the basics electrical parameters. The knowledge of these
parameters will help to understand which internal noise
coupling paths are involved in the degradation of the
conversion process. Some parts are sensitive to the
voltage and some others to the current. This work will be
extended by coupling the ICEM-CE [5] model of the
microcontroller and it will help the understanding of the
RF disturbance propagation in the chip. This technique
shows another way to characterize the IC immunity
characteristics. It will be used to extract the use full data
needed to build an immunity model such as ICIM-CI
model, a new international proposal standard [6].

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Alain Meresse

who passed away six months before his retirement and
after having contributed to the EMC community for
many years.

5. REFERENCES
[1] IEC62132-4 Integrated Circuits Measurement of
electromagnetic immunity – 150KHz to 1GHz – Part 4:
Direct Power Injection.
[2] IEC62132-3 Integrated Circuits Measurement of
electromagnetic immunity – 150KHz to 1GHz – Part 3:
Bulk Current Injection.
[3] FREDERIC J.HARRIS, “On the use of windows for
harmonic analysis with the Discrete Fourier Transform”,
Proceeding of the IEE, VOL. 66, NO. 1, pp.2, January
1978.
[4] Agilent application note, “Spectral Analysis Using a
Deep-Memory Oscilloscope Fast Fourier Transform
(FFT)”, pp. 13, AN 1383-1.
[5] IEC62433-2, Integrated Circuit – EMC IC Modeling
– Part 2: Integrated Circuit Emission Model- Conducted
Emission.
[6] IEC62433-4, Integrated Circuit - EMC IC modeling –
Part 4: ICIM-CI, Integrated Circuit Immunity Model,
Conducted Immunity.