Amps cut costs and power of current sensing

New high-side current sense amplifiers have voltage flexibility and power saving features to allow designers to reduce costs and power for battery sensing or data acquisition applications.

New from Semtech is the SC310 family of high-side current sense amplifiers with voltage flexibility and power saving features that allow mobile device designers to lower the system cost and power draw needed for battery sensing or data acquisition applications.

The SC310 takes voltage input from a sense resistor and converts it to a low-impedance, low-voltage signal that can be fed into a battery charging IC for monitoring battery levels, or into other power regulation or monitoring ICs.

The device has a wide temperature range that makes it especially well suited for industrial applications, and features an industry best accuracy level of 1% (typical) that ensures that the sensing IC receives the most accurate information.

There are SC310 models available in 20, 50 and 100V gain levels which enable the flexibility to specify a wide range of sense resistors and analogue-to-digital convertors (ADC) needed for a complete solution.

This flexibility means a designer can better balance the cost and power draw of a power monitoring system.

Further enhancing the low power draw of the SC310 is the availability of a shutdown (SHDN) pin that can be programmed to disable the device into a low quiescent current state without the input voltage being removed.

The SC310 features a 2.7 to 25V common mode input range for use in many applications, including mobile device or laptop battery monitoring to industrial data acquisition.

Output range is independently adjustable from 3 to 25V to match the voltage levels of the sensing IC.

"Today's digital lifestyles mean frequently used portable electronics can go through many charge cycles, making it very important to provide accurate feedback to the sensing ICs, while at the same time minimising drain on the battery", said Larry King, Vice President of Portable Power Management.

"The SC310s are the most mobile-friendly current sensing devices on the market, with the features needed to allow the engineer to balance power and cost requirements and still improve the customer experience".

The SC310 is packaged in a small SOT-23-6 package.

The package is lead free and meets worldwide environmental requirements including the European Union's Restriction on Hazardous Substances in Electrical Equipment (RoHS) directive.

The SC310 is available immediately in production quantities and is priced at $0.82 each in 1000-piece lots.

Ordering codes are SC310ASKTRT for the 20V version, SC310BSKTRT for the 50V version, and SC310CSKTRT for the 100V version.

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