Abstract: Electrostatic discharge（ESD） is one of the most hazardous sources in the industry. Detection and monitoring of ESD source is the basis for formulating electrostatic protection measures. In order to realize the monitoring and positioning of ESD events and make them applicable to various scenarios, this paper takes ESD electromagnetic radiation as the target source, based on a 4-antenna array and positioning algorithm, and establishes a compact ESD event detection system. The detection performance and positioning accuracy are experimentally verified. The experimental results show that the system can locate ESD events with discharge energy greater than 1.5 μJ within 3 m, and the positioning error is less than 15 cm. The compact structure and lower detection limit make the system have better portability and versatility.