At&t Bell Laboratories

Lucent Technologies Inc.

William K Honea

Gary J Grimes

Charles J Sherman

James R Bortolini

Stephen R Peck

John S Helton

An apparatus and method are disclosed for use in detecting and localizing electrostatically susceptible areas of electronic systems. An exemplary apparatus includes: (1) an ESD gun for providing a source of electric current; (2) a wire coil for generating a magnetic field; and (3) a shielded transmission line, such as a coaxial transmission line ('coax'), for receiving current from the gun. The center conductor of the coax is coupled at one end to the gun and at the other end to one end of the wire coil. The other end of the wire coil is coupled to ground. The current flowing through the wire coil creates a magnetic field, which is bi-directional and orthogonal to the plane of the coil. The magnetic field causes errors in the operation of the system under test when the coil is placed in close proximity with ESD susceptible system components. As such, components that are ESD susceptible can be easily detected and localized. Another feature of the foregoing exemplary apparatus includes a magnetic field absorptive shield (e.g. ferrite-based) coupled to the coax and situated substantially parallel to the plane of the coil. The shield is used to effectively inhibit the magnetic field from emanating from one side of said coil, thereby providing further directionality to the apparatus.

Apparatus for detection and localization of electrostatic discharge

An input clock signal associated with an input data signal is divided by a predetermined integer N, to form a sub-rate clock signal. The sub-rate clock signal is sampled and transmitted along with the input data over an asynchronous data channel. At the receiver, the resulting sub-rate clock signal is received and coupled to a phase lock loop which generates a recovered clock signal of the same frequency and substantially in phase with the input clock signal.

Transmission of a clock signal over an asynchronous data channel

A duplicated transmission system in which two optical wavelengths are utilized on each of a pair of optical links with one optical wavelength communicating data and the other optical wavelength communicating a signal designating an active optical link of the pair. Each of the optical links is terminated on a transmit unit and a receive unit. The two transmit units determine which of the optical links is the active optical link, and each of the transmit units then transmits a signal on the second wavelength of the terminated optical link indicating this decision. The second wavelength of the active optical link designates that it is active, and the second wavelength of the standby optical link designates that it is the standby optical link. Upon reception of the information on the second wavelengths, the receive units both select the active optical link.

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Denver, CO, United States of America

William K Honea