Renesas Electronics Europe Announces Development of a New IO-Link Slave Solution with Industry-leading Small Package for Compact Sensors

The new solution is equipped with a Ball Grid Array (BGA) package with pin pitch of 0.5mm in which the balls are arranged in two rows around the edge of the chip, making it easier for system designers to mount the chip on the circuit board. Like the existing Renesas Electronics IO-Link slave solutions, TMG's IO-Link slave protocol stack software is compliant with the latest IO-Link standard and is available with the new solution, making it simple to implement.

IO-Link is the new standard serial digital communications protocol used for sensors and actuators in industrial automation systems. IO-Link offers the following key advantages:

* Compatible integration into existing field bus or Industrial Ethernet environments
* Process, parameter and diagnosis data in one cable
* Compatible cabling to existing sensor communication

The key advantage of the new solution is that it enables system designers to save significant board space, which is essential for the latest SFF sensor designs. PCBs in these sensors measure as little as 5mm wide, making conventional solutions unfeasible and complex. Designs using separate devices for MCU and transceiver take up more space due to the routing of signals between these devices and the overall size of the devices themselves. Renesas Electronics' new single-chip IO-Link slave solution only requires a single chip equipped in a 4mm x 7mm package to add IO-Link functionality, enabling system designers to develop significantly smaller sensors that meets the industry demand.