Characterisation method for chip card ESD events causing terminal failures

Abstract

Several dual-interface (DI-) chip cards have been reported to cause a system crash of certain card terminals during the card insertion process. Such terminal failures could be reproduced by inserting charged cards which thus act as ESD/EMI sources. In this work, the cards’ discharge pulses are characterised with sub-nanosecond temporal resolution in a configuration very similar to the one in the field. From the exact pulse forms effective equivalent circuits are extracted, which show a clear correlation to the failure generation capability of the cards. Especially the influence of an absent RF antenna and the missing generation of terminal failures for a certain DI-card can be seen electrically by a lower effective card capacity. The presented test and extraction method is not only able to classify the failure generation capability of chip cards but could also lead to a future “charged card model” (CCM) for testing the ESD susceptibility of terminals.