High Side Switches are used and seen most commonly in automotive and industrial applications. High side switches have applications where providing power to off-board loads are essential, providing a point of disconnect between the system, supply, and the load. High-side switches can provide diagnostics during normal operation, such as load current measurement and device temperature monitoring. With load current measurements, the system is able to take measurements of the output current by correlating it with a voltage based output. With device temperature monitoring, the system is able to monitor the internal junction temperature of the switch as it increases during operation using a voltage based output. High side switches also provide diagnostics for faults that can alert when open loads, short-to-GND, loss of battery, or thermal shutdown occur. Each fault brings efficiency to the system by allowing features that help monitor down time and ways to ensure current can continue to be drawn through the switch.

Aside from simple on-off operation, most TI smart high-side switch devices come with diagnostics that help monitor regular operation. Some devices have pins that allow measuring the operating load current on the Current Sense [CS] pin. As the device is best kept operating below a certain temperature threshold, the device junction temperature may also be of interest when monitoring device operation. The following sections discuss how to configure the different operations on devices that are able to and also how to optimize current measurements. Table 2-1 lists the devices that are able to measure load current or both device temperature and load current by using their Current Sense (CS) or Sense (SNS) pins.