Modified ESD Generator to Emulate Body Worn Equipment ESD and Human Skin ESD

This paper describes two modifications to an ESD generator: One that approximates human skin ESD, and another one that approximates discharges to body worn equipment. ESD generators follow the IEC 61000-4-2 or related standards. Variations mainly refer to changes in the RC network or to remove rise time filtering structures for obtaining rise times in contact mode faster than the 0.85 ns. ESD from body worn equipment shows up to 3 times larger peak values than the 3.75 A/kV specified in the ESD standard. To test body worn equipment, it is reasonable to increase the peak current for a given voltage. The first modification of an ESD generator aims at creating contact mode pulses with much larger peak values, approaching the values seen for body worn equipment ESD. The second modification reduces the current. Most real ESDs are human skin ESDs. For those, the average peak current is less than 1A/kV with a very large variation in peak currents and rise time. The modification of the ESD generator changes the tip structure to better approximate human skin ESD by comparing peak value and rise times.