Problems with the electrostatic discharge (ESD) immunity test in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)

The electrostatic discharge (ESD) immunity test is one of the important electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) tests. The IEC standard IEC61000-4-2 is the widely used standard to test the ESD immunity for electronic equipment. Many amendments such as amendment 1 (1998), and amendment 2 (2000) have been published since 1995, but there are still problems with the ESD immunity test even with the 200x version. More than six ESD generators of different bands are tested for different equipments. The results show that the failure voltages of different ESD generators vary widely from different bands for the same test equipment. This may lead to noncomparable results when testing the ESD immunity in the EMC. Further studies show that there is a good correlation between the failure voltage and the induced voltage.