New Industry Products

Silicon-Based OPEN-Alliance-Compliant ESD Protection for Automotive Ethernet

February 11, 2020 by Paul Shepard

Nexperia announced the launch of industry’s pioneering silicon-based, OPEN Alliance-compliant ESD protection for 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1 automotive Ethernet systems. The OPEN (One-Pair Ether-Net) Alliance Special Interest Group (SIG) is a non-profit alliance of automotive industry and technology providers, who collaborate to encourage a wide scale adoption of Ethernet-based networks as the standard in automotive networking applications.

OPEN’s work is meant to prepare IEEE and other international standards. Nexperia is a technical member of the OPEN Alliance SIG, and has developed fully compliant ESD protection devices, based on silicon technology for 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1 Ethernet.

Silicon based ESD protection devices offer a significantly higher performance level of protection - up to 30kV system level robustness – than competing technologies such as varistors.

Target applications

  • ESD protection for in-vehicle network lines in automotive environments
  • OPEN Alliance 100BASE-T1 Ethernet and 1000BASE-T1 Ethernet
  • Low-Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) automotive

“By design of the norm, the Nexperia ESD protection solutions PESD2ETH100-T and PESD2ETH1G-T work with any PHY. Our devices provide outstanding robustness at high data rates without showing degradation like other technologies.” comments Dr. Jan Preibisch, Application Marketing Manager.

Key features and benefits of the first two OPEN Alliance Ethernet compliant ESD Protection devices:

  • PESD2ETH100-T For 100BASE-T1 Ethernet
    • Fully 100BASE-T1 OPEN Alliance compliant
    • Low capacitance <3pF
    • ESD protection up to 30kV (IEC 61000-4-2, contact)
    • 1000 contact discharges with 30 kV (IEC 61000-4-2)
    • High trigger voltage: Vt1 = 10V min.
    • SOT23 package
    • AEC-Q101 qualified / automotive grade
  • PESD2ETH1G-T For 100/1000BASE-T1 Ethernet
    • Fully 100/1000BASE-T1 OPEN Alliance compliant
    • Low capacitance <2pF
    • ESD protection up to 30kV (IEC 61000-4-2, contact)
    • 1000 contact discharges with 15kV (IEC 61000-4-2)
    • High trigger voltage: Vt1 = 100V min.
    • SOT23 package
    • AEC-Q101 qualified / automotive grade