Transient detection circuit for system-level ESD protection and its on-board behavior with EMI/EMC filters

A new on-chip transient detection circuit for system-level electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is proposed. The circuit performance of detecting fast electrical transients has been verified in a 0.18-μm CMOS integrated circuit (IC). The experimental results have confirmed that the proposed on-chip transient detection circuit can detect positive and negative fast electrical transients during system-level ESD zapping. Three board-level noise filtering networks have been investigated their enhancement on detection range of the proposed on-chip transient detection circuit. The chip-level solution can be further co-designed with the board-level solution in order to meet high system-level ESD specification.