Lower power consumption, wider coverage, Texas Instruments PGA460 ultrasonic processor and driver

The automotive grade PGA460-Q1 and non-automotive PGA460 are two existing ultrasonic sensors that can detect a wide range of objects with low power consumption and are ideal for a variety of ultrasonic position sensing and robotic applications.

The TI PGA460 and PGA460-Q1 are highly integrated system-on-chip (SoC) ultrasonic sensor drivers and signal conditioners with advanced DSP cores. Both devices feature two driver-based topologies: transformer-based topologies and direct-drive topologies. The former topology uses a complementary low side driver pair that drives the sensor through a step-up transformer, and the latter uses an external high side FET.

Both devices perform reliable object detection in the range of 5 cm to 11 m with the aid of echo signals. The echo signal passes through the low noise amplifier and the programmable time varying gain stage in the device analog front end (AFE) and is finally fed into the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The digital signal is processed in the DSP core with a time-varying threshold, which is suitable for near-field and far-field object detection.

Communication interfaces include the Time Command Interface (TCI), the single-wire USART asynchronous interface, and the CMOS-class USART. The device's on-chip system diagnostics provide information such as sensor voltage, frequency, and decay time.

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Author：Brittany Antonia （The author of article owns the copyright.）