Design for electrostatic-discharge (ESD) protection in telecommunications products

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) can seriously damage electronic devices and affect the operation of the systems that contain them. Today, design for ESD protection has become a critical — and more difficult — consideration because of shrinking device feature sizes, high system operating speeds, factory automation, and the growth of uncontrolled user environments. To meet this challenge, designers must consider ESD protection early in the product-development process. The designer must also work with the factory engineer to identify performance and manufacturing process tradeoffs and assess their relative importance. Also, testing to customer requirements should be done early and often during the development process. This paper describes ways to limit the damaging effects of ESD at the device, circuit-pack, and system levels. As an example of device-level ESD-protection schemes, we present an approach employed at AT&T Microelectronics. We also review product testing for ESD, industry test standards, and future trends.