Patent attributes
A robust electrostatic (ESD) protection device is provided. In one example, the ESD protection device is configured to accommodate three nodes. When used with a differential signal device, the first and second nodes may be coupled with the differential signal device's BP and BM signal lines, respectively, and the third node may be coupled to a voltage source. This allows for a single ESD protection device to be used to protect the signal lines of the differential signal device, thus providing significant substrate area savings as compared to the conventional means of using three dual-node ESD protection devices to accomplish substantially the same protection mechanism. Moreover, the ESD protection device may be structurally designed to handle high voltage ESD events, as required by the FlexRay standard.
