Methodology to evaluate the robustness of integrated circuits under Cable Discharge Event

Abstract

Cable Discharge Event (CDE) has been the main cause which damages the Ethernet interface. The transmission line pulsing (TLP) system has been the most important method to observe electric characteristics of the device under human-body-model (HBM) ESD stress. In this work, the long-pulse transmission line pulsing (LP-TLP) system is proposed to simulate the influence of CDE on the Ethernet integrated circuits, and the results are compared with conventional 100-ns TLP system. The experimental results have shown that the CDE robustness of NMOS device in a 0.25-mu m CMOS technology is much worse than its HBM electrostatic discharge robustness.