PCA9617A All information provided in this document is subject to legal disclaimers. © NXP B.V. 2013. All rights reserved.
Product data sheet Rev. 1 — 20 March 2013 5 of 23
NXP Semiconductors
PCA9617A
Level translating Fm+ I
2
C-bus repeater
6. Functional description
Refer to Figure 1 “Functional diagram of PCA9617A”.
The PCA9617A enables I
2
C-bus or SMBus translation down to V
CC(A)
as low as 0.8 V
without degradation of system performance. The PCA9617A contains two bidirectional
open-drain buffers specifically designed to support up-translation/down-translation
between the low voltage (as low as 0.8 V) and a 2.5 V, 3.3 V or 5 V I
2
C-bus or SMBus. All
inputs and I/Os are overvoltage tolerant to 5.5 V even when the device is unpowered
(V
CC(B)
and/or V
CC(A)
= 0 V). The PCA9617A includes a power-up circuit that keeps the
output drivers turned off until V
CC(B)
is above 2.2 V and until after the internal reference
circuits have settled ~400 s, and the V
CC(A)
is above 0.8 V. V
CC(B)
and V
CC(A)
can be
applied in any sequence at power-up. After power-up and with the enable (EN) HIGH, a
LOW level on port A (below 0.3V
CC(A)
) turns the corresponding port B driver (either SDA
or SCL) on and drives port B down to about 0.55 V. When port A rises above 0.3V
CC(A)
,
the port B pull-down driver is turned off and the external pull-up resistor pulls the pin
HIGH. When port B falls first and goes below 0.4 V, the port A driver is turned on and
port A pulls down to ~0 V. The port A pull-down is not enabled unless the port B voltage
goes below 0.4 V. If the port B low voltage goes below 0.4 V, the port B pull-down driver is
enabled and port B will only be able to rise to 0.55 V until port A rises above 0.3V
CC(A)
,
then port B will continue to rise being pulled up by the external pull-up resistor. The V
CC(A)
is only used to provide the 0.35V
CC(A)
reference to the port A input comparators and for
the power good detect circuit. The PCA9617A includes a V
CC(A)
overvoltage disable that
turns the channel off if 0.4V
CC(A)
+0.8V>V
CC(B)
. The PCA9617A logic and all I/Os are
powered by the V
CC(B)
pin.
6.1 Enable
The EN pin is active HIGH with thresholds referenced to V
CC(B)
and an internal pull-up to
V
CC(B)
that maintains the device active unless the user selects to disable the repeater to
isolate a badly behaved slave on power-up until after the system power-up reset. It should
never change state during an I
2
C-bus operation because disabling during a bus operation
will hang the bus and enabling part way through a bus cycle could confuse the I
2
C-bus
parts being enabled. The enable does not switch the internal reference circuits so the
~400 s delay is only seen when V
CC(B)
comes up.
The enable pin should only change state when the global bus and the repeater port are in
an idle state to prevent system failures.
6.2 I
2
C-bus systems
As with the standard I
2
C-bus system, pull-up resistors are required to provide the logic
HIGH levels on the buffered bus (standard open-collector configuration of the I
2
C-bus).
The size of these pull-up resistors depends on the system, but each side of the repeater
must have a pull-up resistor. This part designed to work with Standard mode, Fast-mode
and Fast-mode Plus I
2
C-bus devices in addition to SMBus devices. Standard mode and
Fast-mode I
2
C-bus devices only specify 3 mA output drive; this limits the termination
current to 3 mA in a generic I
2
C-bus system where Standard-mode devices, Fast-mode
devices and multiple masters are possible. When only Fast-mode Plus devices are used
with 30 mA at 5 V drive strength, then lower value pull-up resistors can be used. The