Bench Top Troubleshooting Process for Electrostatic Discharge and Radiated Immunity Failures

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) has started to become very common, due to the lower noise margins for digital circuits. While the test is easy to set up in-house, it can become one of the most challenging EMC issues for manufacturers to overcome, because it’s difficult to determine the path of ESD current and therefore the circuitry that’s being affected. This presentation will describe a simple method for tracing the path of ESD current and troubleshooting and mitigating this issue right on the lab bench. An interesting case study will also be described.

Radiated immunity has also started to become very common and is nearly impossible to set up in-house without great expense and trained test operators. Often it involves endless cycles back and forth between adding random fixes in-house and then running back to the compliance test lab. This delay can negatively affect product introductions. This presentation will describe a simple method for troubleshooting and mitigating immunity issues right on the lab bench. Often, the root cause is due to interconnecting cables acting as receive antennas and coupling RF energy into sensitive circuits. Two interesting case studies will also be described.