Harmful effects of lightning surge discharge on communications terminal equipments

The interference problem of lightning surges on electronic and telecommunication products were examined, and a series of experiments were conducted to analyze the failure situations to find out the mechanisms of failures caused by the lightning surge. In addition, the ways in which lightning surges damaged equipment were deduced. It was found that failure positions were scattered and appeared in groups, and most of them were ground discharge. Internet access transformer had high withstand-voltage under the lightning pulse, and the lightning surge seldom passed through the internet access transformer. The lightning current can release to the ground via the computer network adapter of the terminal user. The study will help to improve the performance of lightning surge protection circuit and protection level.