power saving

Semtech's Current Sense Amplifiers with Voltage Flexibility and Power Saving Features

News Release from: Semtech
04/12/2005

Semtech announces a 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 20V, 50V and 100V gain levels which enable the flexibility to specify a wide range of sense resistors and analog-to-digital converters (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 2.7V 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 3V to 25V to match the voltage levels of the sensing IC.

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.