Is additional ESD protection required for my external interface?

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protections in our products allow normal handling and equipment manufacture. Processor signals exposed to ESD outside of a packaged product may need additional protection. External buffers or protection devices should be added to meet the ESD requirements of the end product.

ESD protection is often required for USB, SDIO, ATAPI and MLB. Even switches and LEDs require additional protection in some products. Ethernet, UART, audio, CAN and many other interfaces are already normally buffered outside our processor.

If you need information about ESD have a look at the "Armstron Papers", e.g. here : http://www.compliance-club.com/KeithArmstrong.aspx (you need to register). It is a source we use ourselves and give to our customers on EMC general.

Thank you Andreas. I see that one of the Keith Armstrong papers on EMC does discuss ESD. His more EMC related papers look excellent. ESD and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) can both require the addition of filters and other devices to achieve product reliability, regulatory approval and market acceptance.

Perhaps another example of do we need, and where do we need to apply additional ESD protection external to the processor is in this simple paper on how to protect USB2 from electrostatic discharge.

http://www.littelfuse.com/data/en/Application_Notes/ec616.pdf

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