DDS-Based Analog IC Test System for Audio ICs

IC testing has become an important supporting technology for the IC industry. A comprehensive and rigorous IC test process can not only improve the reliability of the products, but also reduce costs. In this work, a home-made analog IC test system was developed based on direct digital synthesis (DDS) and field programmable gate array (FPGA) that specialized in manufacturing testing for ETEK audio analog devices including audio DAC, audio effect processing circuit, and audio power amplifier circuit. Such system is cost-efficient and function-trimmed so as to lower the cost while still satisfying the basic needs of audio analog testing. In this article, the hardware design and implementation of such home-made analog IC test system was described and illustrated. The validity of such system was shown by the result of a trial-run test from a batch of audio power amplifiers, and the comparison of the obtained parameters with those from the commercial system further verified that our design and implementation of IC test system could be well adopted in the industry for manufacturing testing.