Silicon Photonics Testing: Design for Testability, Fault Detection, and Manufacturing Variation Analysis in Photonic Integrated Circuits
2026-06-08 • Emerging Technologies
Emerging Technologies
AI summaryⓘ
The authors present a new method for testing tiny computer parts made from light, called silicon photonic circuits. They designed special test components that help check if these light circuits work properly by measuring things like power and timing of signals. They tested their method on two examples: a simple brain-like network using light and a light-based logic circuit with loops. This work shows a way to make sure these complex light circuits work correctly before using them in real devices.
Silicon photonicsDesign-for-test (DFT)Photonic integrated circuitsOptical neural networksOptical logic circuitsSignal powerSignal phaseTest-access architectureFault detection
Authors
Pratishtha Agnihotri, Priyank Kalla, Steve Blair
Abstract
This paper proposes a design-for-test (DFT) methodology and architecture for testing and validation of silicon photonic integrated circuits. We describe the design of silicon photonic circuits and components that comprise the proposed DFT architecture. The designs are extensively simulated and validated as test-access and fault-detection circuitry. We demonstrate how the DFT approach can be deployed on photonic integrated circuits and how they can be tested for correct operation, in terms of signal power and phase. The application is demonstrated on two distinct types of designs -- an optical neural network comprising optical devices in a feed-forward topology, and on an optical logic circuit with feedback loops.