THERMAL MONITORING OF SELF-CHECKING SYSTEMS

With the increasing power density in integrated systems resulting from scaling down, the occurrence of field failures due to overheating has considerably increased. Faulty operation can be prevented by on-line temperature monitoring. This paper deals with questions of on-line tem perature monitoring in safety-critical systems. First the possible tem perature sensors are reviewed and basic principles of self-checking sy stems including such sensors are detailed, then a new temperature sens or cell with extremely good parameters designed especially for DfTT ap plications is presented. The basic questions of integrating thermal se nsors into self-checking systems are also discussed.