Analog IC developer austriamicrosystems has introduced the AS8500/AS8501 family of high-precision sensor interfaces, which offer resolution of less than 10 mA in a measuring range of up to 1500 A. The offset-free data acquisition ICs are suited for battery management systems in vehicles, among other applications. They offer noise values of less than 1 µV in the frequency range of up to 10 Hz, a linearity error below 0.1%, and a resolution of up to 21 bits using external averaging.

Data is fed to a programmable pre-amplifier via chopper circuitry, transmitted to a 16-bit A/D converter, offset-corrected, calibrated, and filtered by a DSP. The measured data is transferred to an external microprocessor via a serial interface at sampling rates of up to 16 kHz. The AS8500/AS8501 also include a high-precision voltage reference, an IC temperature measurement element and internal calibration parameter storage.

A robot system tests individual analog parameters in the AS8501, determines specific trim parameters by means of a complex calibration routine and stores that data in the IC. The AS8500 is delivered with a standard trim setting. Both devices are available in a lead-free SOIC16 package.