MICROCONTROLLER SOLUTIONS

Components and Solutions for E-Metering Designs

From microcontrollers to display drivers and AC/DC conversion to wireless connectivity, the NXP Semiconductors range of products from Arrow provides everything the engineer needs to rapidly create electronic metering applications.

NXP Semiconductors offers a variety of technologies that can help engineers meet the demanding requirements of new and emerging electronic metering (e-metering) applications.


Figure 1 – Typical Electronic e-meter Architecture with Communications

Figure 1 illustrates how this broad portfolio of technologies can be deployed in a typical metering application.

Microcontrollers

NXP microcontrollers for e-metering range from the 8-bit LPC 900 family for economy solutions up to the high performance 32-bit ARM7 LPC2000 family. The new LPC23xx and LPC24xx, in particular, are ideal for high end e-metering systems featuring advanced functions such as power quality analysis of mains flicker and transients. Embodying an internal ADC, they provide sufficient accuracy for virtually all standard electronic e-metering applications. They also feature an external memory controller and serial-parallel interface enabling them to connect to 12- or 16-bit ADCs of all major manufacturers if even higher accuracy is needed.

The LPC 23xx and 24xx families feature a host of on-chip communication peripherals including up to four UART interfaces, other serial interfaces such as SPI, SSP, I²C and CAN, as well as modem and USB connectivity and an Ethernet controller with integrated MAC. As a result, they also meet the broad range of communication needs of today’s utility companies. These devices can also accommodate downloadable firmware in the field, which can be critical for some utility companies.

A Broad Range of Peripherals

NXP also offers a range of peripherals that can be used to deliver wireless communications in e-metering designs. This includes the SA636, SA58646 and SA58641 RF transceiver chips, WiMax transceivers, BGW200 802.11b low-power WLAN and our Bluetooth System in a Package’ (SiP) solutions. Also available are a range of RF MMIC and wideband transistor based power amplifiers and PIN diodes for RF front ends, plus a range of USB, SD and MMC interfaces for logging metering data. NXP also offers support in the development of GSM, GPRS, CDMA and EDGE cellular communication solutions.

Completing the broad portfolio of NXP peripherals for electronic e-metering is a range of Real Time Clock (RTC) ICs and LCD display drivers, plus high performance AC/DC converters. With output powers up to 30W, these SMPS ICs are the perfect choice for low power DC voltage requirements common in electronic e-metering applications.

Finally, NXP e-metering solutions can also draw upon an extremely wide range of general purpose NXP commodity products from ESD protection devices to complete families of discrete semiconductors such as diodes, transistors and logic.

NXP Solutions for e-Metering

• Low end to high performance microcontrollers
• RF and WiMax transceivers
• WLAN and Bluetooth SiPs
• RF MMIC and wideband power amplifiers
• USB and SD interfaces
• GSM, GPRS, CDMA and EDGE cellular comms
• RTCs
• LCD drivers
• AC/DC converters
• Commodity products

For further information, including the NXP e-Metering Solutions Guide and information on how to obtain Samples, please click here