Controller provides alternative to ORing

The Endura ISL6144 is billed as the industry's first positive high-voltage ORing FET controller IC.

The Endura ISL6144 is billed as the industry's first positive high-voltage ORing FET controller IC.

Operating over a range of +10 to +75V, this new device is designed to replace lossy diodes in power distribution applications, thus greatly improving power efficiency, reducing heat and ensuring reliability.

Until now, a low-loss, high-efficiency ORing solution for power distribution has not been available to telecomms and datacomms applications above 30V.

"The ISL6144 represents a significant technological milestone toward improving system power efficiency and reliability", said Cindy Drapcho, Vice President of Intersil's Power Products.

"With ever increasing populations and resulting expanding communications infrastructures, energy conservation, operating costs and system reliability are key considerations.

The ISL6144 joins our PWM power ICs to help telecomms/datacomms designers attain these important high-performance goals".

The traditional solution to ORing power sources to ensure uninterrupted system operation through power source redundancy has been the use of diodes.

Two or more power sources can be connected in parallel to power the same system, with each power source effectively isolated from the other.

Using diodes to do this is a simple solution but it is also a costly one in terms of wasted power, voltage drop and generated heat.

The power loss across a typical ORing diode passing a 20A current is in the range of 10 to 14W, whereas only 2W is lost in a 5mohm mosfet conduction resistance.

In addition, heatsinking requirements are greatly diminished.

With the introduction of Intersil's new ISL6144 ORing FET controller IC, telecomms and datacomms designers can greatly improve power distribution efficiency by replacing the diodes with low-loss N-channel mosfets.

When multiplied by the number of supplies the power savings is significant and greatly reduces system-threatening heat.

Additionally, a diode itself has no way of offering monitoring or protection.

When a diode fails, it initially shorts, removing the isolation between supplies.

This loss of isolation causes one supply to act as a load for the other, or others, thus providing a path for back current that eventually causes the failure of the supply and brings the system down.

The ISL6144 plus mosfet solution offers monitoring and protection features that ensure the reliability of the system.

The ISL6144 is available now in choice of QFN (ISL6144IR) or TSSOP (ISL6144IV) package.

The suggested resale price in 100 to 999 unit quantities is $2.60 for each IC.

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