Date: 04/11/2010

New current transducers from Micronas for automotive and industrial applications

Micronas has expanded its Hall-effect current sensor device family CUR 315x by adding new CUR 3150 and CUR 3155.

Both programmable devices produce digital output, which is a PWM signal with a resolution up to 16 bits. The CUR 3150 and CUR 3155 employ active compensation to deliver measurement accuracy. These devices bring down sensitivity error over temperature resulting in a value below 1 percent under optimum conditions.

These current sensors can be used to measure current in applications such as battery monitoring (e.g. in hybrid or electric vehicles), start-stop systems, smart metering and solar inverters.

Micronas says combined with a ferromagnetic flux concentrator, the CUR 315x family is capable of determining electric currents in the milliampere range. When using a special conductor configuration, measurements in the heavy current range are also possible without flux concentrator. The bandwidth reaches as high as 2 kHz with programmable magnetic field ranges from ±20 to ±160 mT.

The CUR 315x family comes along with a TO92UT housing capable of being soldered or welded. Other features of the current transducer family include a temperature range from TJ = -40 to 140 °C, the detection of overvoltage and the reverse voltage protection of the supply connection.

Priced between 0.75 and 0.85 Euros for 100K pieces these sensors are sampling in December 2010. Qualified samples scheduled for February 2011.