All-in-one LIN motor driver cuts material costs
Melexis’ Gen 3 MLX81330 (0.5 A motor drive) and MLX81332 (1.0 A motor drive) LIN drivers are based on high-voltage SOI (Silicon On Insulator) technology to deliver the required high levels of robustness and function density, combining analog and digital circuitry to create true single-chip solutions that are compliant with the industry standard LIN 2.x/SAE J2602 and ISO 17987-4 specifications for LIN slave nodes.
Along with an integrated motor driver, they feature extensive I/O capability and a dual-core microcontroller architecture. One core is dedicated to communications while the second microcontroller runs the application software.
With their ‘all-in-one’ approach to LIN slave design, the MLX81330 and MLX81332 enable a reduced Bill of Materials (BoM), smaller PCB, simpler product design and faster assembly, promises Melexis. For example, the MLX81332 interfaces directly with an ECU and can drive up to four phases of a motor, with a maximum current of 1 A per phase, or two phases with a maximum current of 1.4 A. This means it can drive a 2-wire DC motor, 3-wire BLDC motor or 4-wire bipolar stepper motor, using either sensored or sensorless field-oriented control (FOC) algorithms.
The devices include 5×16-bit PWM timers, 2×16-bit timers and a 10bit ADC, along with a differential current sense amplifier and temperature sensors. Over-current, over-voltage and over-temperature detection/protection is also integrated. In addition to analog-ready I/O, they are able to interface to standard external sensors using protocols commonly used in automotive applications, such as SPI and SENT.
The integrated processing cores share a common on-chip memory architecture. The application core (MLX16-FX) has access to 32 KB Flash memory with ECC, 10 KB of ROM, 2 KB of RAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM with ECC. The communications processor (MLX4) can access 6 KB of ROM and 512 bytes of RAM.
The embedded motor controller ICs are designed for safety applications according to ASIL-B (ISO 26262). The software supplied for the new driver chip includes a LIN communication stack.
More information: www.melexis.com
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