Infineon launches microcontroller for automotives

This microcontroller integrates high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems onto a single chip, providing a fully integrated embedded system for monitoring and managing automotive 12 V lead-acid batteries, crucial for vehicles' electrical systems. The new microcontroller is ISO26262 compliant, ensuring compact and secure intelligent battery sensing and management in modern vehicles.

The PSoC 4 HVPA-144K's dual high-resolution sigma-delta ADCs, along with four digital filtering channels, enable precise measurement of the battery's state-of-charge (SoC) and state-of-health (SoH) by accurately measuring key parameters such as voltage, current, and temperature with an accuracy of up to ±0.1%. The device includes two programmable gain amplifiers (PGAs) with automatic gain control, allowing autonomous control of the analog front end without software intervention. Shunt-based current sensing for batteries offers higher accuracy than conventional Hall sensors.

With an integrated 12 V LDO (42 V tolerant), the device can be directly powered from the 12 V lead-acid battery without requiring an external power supply. Additionally, an integrated transceiver enables direct communication with the LIN bus. The product meets ASIL-C functional safety requirements according to ISO26262.

The PSoC 4 HVPA-144K is based on the Arm Cortex-M0+ MCU, operating at up to 48 MHz with up to 128 KB of code flash, 8 KB of data flash, and 8 KB of SRAM, all with ECC. It also includes digital peripherals such as four timers/counters/PWMs and a serial communication block configurable as I2C/SPI/UART.

Infineon provides automotive-quality software support for the PSoC 4 HVPA-144K. The Automotive Peripheral Driver Library (AutoPDL) and Safety Library (SafeTlib) are developed following standard automotive software development processes. Both libraries are A-SPICE compliant, adhering to MISRA 2012 AMD1 and CERT C, and ISO26262 compliant.

The introduction of the PSoC 4 HVPA-144K lays the groundwork for expanding Infineon's PSoC microcontroller portfolio to include Li-ion battery management systems for electric vehicles (EVs). The portfolio will soon encompass various products for monitoring and managing high voltage (400 V and above) and low voltage (12 V/48 V) batteries, facilitating the adoption of future EVs.