Date: 06/10/2009

Turnkey smart meter reference design from Freescale

Freescale has released its ColdFire MCU based turnkey metering reference design for the electrical metering market covering both home and industrial applications.

The polyphase reference design, based on Freescale's advanced MCF51EM256 ColdFire MCU, is a cost-optimized implementation of a single-phase or three-phase smart electrical meter. The reference design contains necessary hardware and software to make development of smart meters quick and easy.

The integrated peripherals includes a 16-bit analog-to-digital converter with a programmable delay block, an independent real-time clock with calendaring function, dual secure flash memory banks, an automated meter reading (AMR) interface and a liquid crystal display (LCD) driver.

The MCF51EM family supports remote firmware updates, to secure and protect the meter and supports a wide range of display panels for smart meters.

"Freescale recognizes that embedded control and integrated connectivity will be at the heart of future smart grids and has developed a new generation of intelligent system-on-chip controllers specifically for smart grid applications," said Aiden Mitchell, director of Industrial and Multi-Market Microcontrollers at Freescale. "Our goal is to provide developers with complete plug-and-play solutions designed to alleviate cost and time-to-market concerns, while bringing everyone a step closer to a unified smart grid."

The polyphase reference design, based on the MCF51EM256 MCU, includes the design documentation and software for quick production meter design and tested against the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards.

For more details visit www.freescale.com