The pervasiveness of the semiconductor industry in an increasing range of applications that span human activity stems from our ability to integrate more and more functionalities onto a small silicon area. The competitiveness in this industry, apart from product originality, is mainly defined by the manufacturing cost, as well as the product reliability. Therefore, finding a trade-off between these two often contradictory objectives is a major concern and calls for efficient test solutions. The focus nowadays is mainly on Analog and Mixed-Signal (AMS) circuits since the associated testing cost can amount up to 70% of the overall manufacturing cost despite that AMS circuits typically occupy no more than 20% of the die area. To this end, there are intensified efforts by the industry to develop more economical test solutions without sacrificing product quality. Design-for-Test (DfT) is a promising alternative to the standard test techniques. It consists of integrating during the development phase of the chip extra on-chip circuitry aiming to facilitate testing or even enable a built-in self-test (BIST). However, the adoption of a DFT technique requires a prior evaluation of its capability to distinguish the functional circuits from the defective ones. In this thesis, we present a novel methodology for estimating the quality of a DfT technique that is readily incorporated in the design flow of AMS circuits. Based on the generation of a large synthetic sample of circuits that takes into account the impact of the process ariations on the performances and test measurements, this methodology computes test metrics that determine whether the DFT technique is capable of rejecting defective devices while passing functional devices. In addition, the thesis proposes a novel, purely digital BIST technique for Sigma-Delta analog-to-digital converters. The efficiency of the test metrics evaluation methodology is demonstrated on this novel BIST technique. Finally, a hardware prototype developed on an FPGA shows the possibility of adapting the BIST technique within a calibration system.
