Calibration of electrostatic discharge generators and results of an international comparison

Electrostatic discharge generators are widely used for testing various equipment with any kind of man-machine interface. The calibration of ESD-generators causes a number of problems such as: the target and the cable set which have a frequency dependent transfer characteristic, the measurement system of large bandwidth etc. A procedure is presented that enables the characterisation of the measurement system and a method is described which allows the correction of the data for the transmission characteristics. Results of an international comparison of ESD-generator calibrations are presented.