Fundamental characteristics of multi-electrode gas discharge tube small enough to be mounted close to the local area network port of equipment

Recently, lightning has caused considerable damage to telecommunications equipment that has multiple ports, such as home gateways. Lightning surges have also damaged other equipment installed further along a building´s communications flow direction, that is into analog telecommunication lines or power lines and then via optical telecommunications equipment through LAN cables, as well as equipment for sending signals in the opposite flow direction. Many studies have focused on providing lightning protection for power ports and analog telecommunication ports, and basic lightning protection technologies have been established. In addition, there is a commercially available protection device that can be attached to LAN ports to bypass lightning surge currents through grounding. However, this is costly and considerable space is required to arrange many gas discharge tubes (GDTs) on a printed circuit board. To address these issues, we developed a more compact multi-electrode GDT, the same width as an RJ45 socket, for easy installation in telecommunications equipment, and investigated the fundamental electrical characteristics of this GDT. We also investigated the transmission characteristics of this GDT when mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). As a result, it was found that the more compact multi-electrode GDT exhibited fundamental electrical characteristics similar to previous GDT, and transmission performance satisfied JIS X5150:2004 class E with a transmission rate of 1 Gbps.