Analysis and design of ESD protection circuits for high-frequency/RF applications

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection devices can have an adverse effect on the performance of high frequency and RF circuits. This work presents for the first time, an S-parameter based analysis of the performance of RF circuits with various ESD protection designs. Additionally, a design methodology for distributed ESD protection using coplanar waveguides is developed to achieve a better impedance match over a broad frequency range. By using this technique, an ESD device with a parasitic capacitance of 200 fF will attenuate the signal power by only 0.27 dB at 10 GHz.