MEASURING APPARATUS, MEASURING METHOD AND TEST APPARATUS

• US 20100023289A1
• Filed: 01/21/2009
• Published: 01/28/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Advantest Corporation
• Original Assignee: Advantest Corporation
• Inventors: ITO, HIROSHI, MIYAZAKI, MASASHI
• Granted Patent: US 8,060,326 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/69
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 29/02 Measuring characteristics of individual pulses, e.g. deviation from pulse flatness, rise time or duration
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 29/023 Measuring pulse width
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/31725 Timing aspects, e.g. clock distribution, skew, propagation delay for tester hardware G01R31/31937

Abstract

Provided is a measurement apparatus comprising a first timing detecting section that detects first change timings of a signal under measurement; a second timing detecting section that detects second change timings of the signal under measurement; a buffer section that buffers data indicating the first change timings detected by the first timing detecting section and data indicating the second change timings detected by the second timing detecting section; and a calculating section that acquires, from the buffer section, the data indicating the first change timings and the data indicating the second change timings, calculates a temporal relationship between the first change timings and the second change timings, and outputs the temporal relationship.

Claims

1. A measurement apparatus comprising:

a first timing detecting section that detects first change timings of a signal under measurement;

a second timing detecting section that detects second change timings of the signal under measurement;

a buffer section that buffers data indicating the first change timings detected by the first timing detecting section and data indicating the second change timings detected by the second timing detecting section; and

a calculating section that acquires, from the buffer section, the data indicating the first change timings and the data indicating the second change timings, calculates a temporal relationship between the first change timings and the second change timings, and outputs the temporal relationship.

2. The measurement apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the temporal relationship is a time difference.

3. The measurement apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the buffer section includes:

a first FIFO section that sequentially stores pieces of the data indicating the first change timings detected by the first timing detecting section, and sequentially outputs the stored pieces of data in an order in which the pieces of data were received; and

a second FIFO section that sequentially stores pieces of the data indicating the second change timings detected by the second timing detecting section, and sequentially outputs the stored pieces of data in an order in which the pieces of data were received.

4. The measurement apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising an edge adjusting section that deletes one piece of data indicating a second change timing stored at the top of the second FIFO section when the piece of data indicating the second change timing stored at the top of the second FIFO section is earlier than a piece of data indicating a first change timing stored at the top of the first FIFO section, wherein

the calculating section acquires, from the first FIFO section and the second FIFO section, a piece of data indicating a first change timing and a piece of data indicating a second change timing that is later than the first change timing, and calculates the time difference by subtracting the first change timing from the second change timing.

5. The measurement apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the first timing detecting section and the second timing detecting section detect, as the first change timings and the second change timings respectively, rising edges at which the signal under measurement changes from a value that is less than a threshold value to a value that is greater than a threshold value and falling edges at which the signal under measurement changes from a value that is greater than a threshold value to a value that is less than a threshold value.

6. The measurement apparatus according to claim 5, further comprising an edge designating section that designates, for the first timing detecting section and the second timing detecting section, which of the rising edges or the falling edges are to be detected as the first change timings and which are to be detected as the second change timings.

7. The measurement apparatus according to claim 6, wherein

when measuring a pulse width of the signal under measurement, the edge designating section designates, for the first timing detecting section and the second timing detecting section, that one of the rising edges and the falling edges is to be detected as the first change timings and that the other is to be detected as the second change timings.

8. The measurement apparatus according to claim 6, further comprising a switching section that switches whether (i) a first signal under measurement is supplied to both the first timing detecting section and the second timing detecting section or (ii) the first signal under measurement is supplied to the first timing detecting section and a second signal under measurement is supplied to the second timing detecting section, wherein, when measuring the time difference between the first signal under measurement and the second signal under measurement,

the switching section supplies the first signal under measurement to the first timing detecting section and supplies the second signal under measurement to the second timing detecting section;

the first timing detecting section detects change timings of the first signal under measurement as the first change timings,

the second timing detecting section detects change timings of the second signal under measurement as the second change timings, and

the calculating section calculates the time differences between the first change timings and the second change timings.

9. The measurement apparatus according to claim 4, further comprising:

an accumulating section that calculates an aggregate of the plurality of time differences sequentially calculated by the calculating section by adding together the plurality of time differences; and

an averaging section that calculates an average time difference by dividing (i) the aggregate of the plurality of time differences calculated by the accumulating section by (ii) the number of time differences added together to achieve the aggregate.

10. The measurement apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the first timing detecting section and the second timing detecting section each include:

a delaying section that generates a plurality of delayed signals by delaying the signal under measurement by a plurality of different delay amounts;

a first acquiring section that acquires each of the plurality of delayed signals at a first phase of a reference clock;

a second acquiring section that acquires each of the plurality of delayed signals at a second phase of the reference clock, which is different from the first phase; and

a change point detecting section that detects a change point of the signal under measurement based on values of the delayed signals acquired by the first acquiring section and values of the delayed signals acquired by the second acquiring section.

11. A measurement method comprising:

detecting first change timings of a signal under measurement;

detecting second change timings of the signal under measurement;

buffering data indicating the first change timings and data indicating the second change timings using a buffer section; and

acquiring, from the buffer section, the data indicating the first change timings and the data indicating the second change timings, calculating a temporal relationship between the first change timings and the second change timings, and outputting the temporal relationship.

12. A test apparatus that tests a device under test, comprising:

a test signal supplying section that supplies the device under test with a test signal for testing the device under test; and

a measurement apparatus that measures a timing of a response signal output by the device under test in response to the test signal, wherein the measurement apparatus includes;

a first timing detecting section that detects first change timings of the response signal;

a second timing detecting section that detects second change timings of the response signal;

a first FIFO section that buffers the first change timings detected by the first timing detecting section;

a second FIFO section that buffers the second change timings detected by the second timing detecting section; and

a calculating section that acquires, from the first FIFO section and the second FIFO section, the first change timings and the second change timings, calculates a temporal relationship between the first change timings and the second change timings, and outputs the temporal relationship.