austriamicrosystems' high voltage automotive CMOS LIN 2.1 transceiver ICs

UNTERPREMSTAETTEN, AUSTRIA: austriamicrosystems, a leading global designer and manufacturer of high performance analog ICs for communications, industrial, medical and automotive applications, announced two new in-vehicle-network ICs, the AS8520 and AS8530.

The AS8520 is dedicated to LIN slaves which can be found in car doors, car roof modules, seat modules or similar applications providing the transceiver, a voltage regulator, four-wire micro controller interface for window watchdog, diagnosis and backup register access, as well as two relay drivers and a resistive attenuator.

The AS8530 is a general purpose companion IC for LIN slaves providing the transceiver, a LDO and a shared pin microcontroller interface with window watchdog inside an 8-pin package.

austriamicrosystems’ AS8520 provides a LIN 2.1 transceiver with more than 6kV ESD IEC61000-4-2 capability on bus pin, a low drop out linear voltage regulator, for up to 60mA load, from nominal 6V-18V supply voltage with over voltage capability up to 42V.

The AS8520 also features two low side relay drivers and a resistive attenuator with disable switch for power saving. A four-wire microcontroller serial interface for device configuration, window watchdog trigger, diagnosis read out and read/write of eight continuously supplied backup registers, complete the features of AS8520.

The AS8530 is a stripped down version of AS8520 without the application specific relay driver and attenuator, providing two wire shared pin micro controller interfaces to provide the same digital features as AS8520 in an 8-pin package. Both circuits are designed for very low quiescent current of typically 36uA in standby mode.

“The AS8520 and AS8530 enable a new generation of LIN nodes. This is due to the fastest start-up procedure available on the market, which is achieved by the integration of low power back-up registers”, says Bernhard Czar, marketing director automotive at austriamicrosystems. “Additionally, all current and future EMC requirements are addressed by the unique integrated automatic slew-rate control.”

These LIN Companion ICs provide outstanding diagnosis capability through its microcontroller interfaces. Continuously powered 64-bit backup memory and highly secure non latching ESD clamp structure on the bus pin are additional highlights.

Both devices are available with 5V or 3,3V regulated output voltage. The AS8520 is in a 24-pin 6x6mm QFN package and the AS8530 in an 8-pin epSOIC package. Both ICs are suitable for operating environments from -40°C to +125°C.