A realistic FDTD model for simulating electrostatic discharge test

ESD (electrostatic discharge) testing is becoming an indispensable item to test the immunity of electronic and information equipment. We previously developed a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) prototype model (Zhang, X. et al., Proc. ISAP i-02, p.347-50, 2002) for simulating the contact discharge of a commercially available ESD-gun and validated its effectiveness. We have improved the previous FDTD modeling to realize a more realistic ESD-gun for accurate simulation. With the improved FDTD model, we then simulated ESD testing of printed circuit boards (PCBs). We also carried out measurements on real boards. We found that there is good agreement between the simulation and the measurements.