Calibration of electrostatic discharge generators and results of an international comparison

Abstract

Electrostatic discharge generators are widely used for testing various equipment with any kind of man-machine interface. The calibration of ESD generators presents a number of problems such as those arising from a standard which is not precisely enough defined, and broadband measurement systems which are frequency dependent. A procedure to characterize the measurement system is presented, and a method is described which allows the correction of the data for the transmission characteristics. The results of an international comparison of ESD-generator calibrations are also presented.