ESD Testing, Luck or Wisdom

Testing conform the ESD standard IEC 61000-4-2 (1995) is part of the EMC tests that have to be carried out to comply with the overall EMC requirements of the generic or product related EMC standards. When all testing is performed according all applicable requirements, for Europe the CE mark may be added to the product Unfortunately, it shows when carrying out these ESD tests that great differences will occur between the test results when these are taken at various test locations. In this paper, the causes for these differences with respect to contact discharge will be reviewed. It is expected that with air-discharges larger differences will occur. By performing ESD tests, the result will be influenced by: the performance of the ESD generator itself, the way the ESD generator is held (by the operator) during the test. Also the test set-up and in particular the routing and common-mode termination of the cables attached to the EUT are of importance Finally, the processing of the obtained measurement results by statistics will become inevitable. In this paper, all of the mentioned subjects will be dealt with as part of the revision of the IEC 610004-2 standard that is presently under revision and should be completed in 2002.