On-chip Generation of Sine-wave Summing Digital Signals: an Analytic Study Considering Implementation Constraints

In the context of biosensor as much as Built-In-Self Test (BIST), on-chip sine-wave signal generation is a recurring research topic. Considering the implementation constraints, it implies a trade-off between the amount of resources and the signal quality. An attractive solution consists in combining several digital signals to build this analog sine-wave. The objective of this paper is to give an analytic study of various potential digital-based solutions. Thanks to this study, we prove that the technique consisting in setting the phase shifts and various amplitude values of the square-wave signals is the most efficient approach. This study allows the selection of the optimal square-wave signal parameters to cancel low-order harmonics of the generated signal. We proposed a solution for specification-oriented definition of the architecture.