Built-In Self-Test of Millimeter-Wave Integrated Front-End Circuits : How Far Have We Come?

With automotive radar and 5G/6G communications, mass-market applications for millimeter-wave circuits in silicon technologies have been identified or established in recent years. For high-volume, millimeter-wave integrated circuits, operating roughly between 30 GHz and 300 GHz, testability is a major concern, both from an overall cost as well as a quality assurance perspective. A solution for cost effective, low-overhead test of millimeter-wave integrated circuits is the integration of built-in self-test (BIST) features into the high-frequency front-end. Because BIST is an emerging topic in high-frequency circuit design, the field is still very fragmented. A plethora of different system concepts as well as building blocks have been proposed in recent years. This paper tries to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in millimeter-wave BIST in an attempt to drive the field towards identification of standardized self-test solutions.