The new ESD protection method is proposed for RF Applications. The short-circuited stub is the main component of proposed method. Because the method has no the pn-junction for ESD protection element, there is no parasitic capacitance which degrades the RF characteristic of core circuit. With the same reason, the method is endured very large ESD current. With the proposed ESD protection method, the Ku-Band LNA is designed and implemented. The ESD test results show that proposed ESD protection method protects the core circuit from ESD very effectively. And the ESD protection network to protect the whole core circuit from ESD is proposed using short-circuited stub. But this method cannot be applied to the circuit whose operation frequency is low. So, with the InGaP HBT process, the conventional ESD diode composed of base layer and collector layer is designed and implemented. By the ESD test results and model parameters of ESD diode, the way to reduce the parasitic capacitance induced from ESD diode and to get reasonable ESD survival level is proposed. And the ESD protection network using ESD diode to protect whole core circuits from ESD is explained.
In appendix, the implemented ESD generator used for ESD test of various ESD diodes and proposed ESD protection method is showed. The ESD generator is satisfied the international HBM ESD standard.
