High accuracy current sensors based on AMR technology

“Our new integrated, AMR based current sensor family provides the best performance for the price in the industry,” said Khagendra Thapa, VP Current Sensor Product for ACEINNA. “There are other AMR based current sensing solutions on the market, but they require a great deal of integration to make them work. Ours are plug and play.” 

The MCx1101 are fully integrated, bi-directional current sensors that offer much higher DC accuracy and dynamic range compared with alternative solutions. For example, the ±20A version has a typical accuracy of ±0.6% and are guaranteed to achieve an accuracy of ±2.0% (max) at 85°C.

These new current sensors also guarantee an offset of ±60mA, or ±0.3% of FSR (max) over temperature, which means that high accuracy can be achieved over a roughly 10:1 range of currents. This is a roughly ten times over improvement in dynamic range vs. Hall-sensor-based devices.

These devices deliver a unique combination of high accuracy, 1.5MHz signal bandwidth with industry benchmark phase shift vs. frequency and 4.8kV isolation making them ideal for high- and low-side sensing in fast current control loops for high performance power supplies, inverters and motor control applications.

The fast response and high bandwidth of the MCx1101 is also well suited for fast switching SiC and GaN based power stages enabling power system designers to make use of the higher speeds and smaller components enabled by wide band-gap switches. Output step response time is 0.3us. The MCx1101 also provides an integrated over current detection flag to help implement OCP (Over Current Protection) required in modern power systems. Over current detection response time is fast 0.2us.

The family includes ±50, ±20, and ±5A ranges, and is offered in both fixed gain (MCA1101) and ratiometric gain (MCR1101) versions. It is packaged in an industry standard SOIC-16 package with a low impedance (0.9 milli-ohm) current path and is certified by UL/IEC/EN for isolated applications.