TIDUF98 October 2024
The isolated RS-485 portion of this reference design uses capacitive galvanic isolation, which has an inherent life span advantage over an opto-isolator. In particular, industrial devices are usually pressed into service for much longer periods of time than consumer electronics; therefore, the maintenance of effective isolation over a period of 15 years or longer is important.
The variant of the ISO6731 device used in the RS-485 circuitry of this reference design provides galvanic isolation up to 5kVRMS for one minute per UL. This digital isolator has three isolated channels where two channels are forward channels and the other is a reverse channel. In this design, two isolation channels are used for the TX and RX. If RS-485 is selected for communication, the third isolation channel is used for the control signal to enable the receiver or driver. Each isolation channel has a logic input and output buffer separated by a double capacitive silicon dioxide (SiO2) insulation barrier. This chip supports a signaling rate of 50 Mbps and operates from a 2.5V, 3.3V, and 5V supply and logic levels and is characterized from –40°C to 125°C.