Avago Technologies has announced new optical isolation amplifiers for motor control and current sensing applications. The ACPL-790B, ACPL-790A and ACPL-7900 devices improve the accuracy and response times of the Avago isolation amplifier portfolio, while addressing compact applications with a smaller footprint package design. The isolation amplifiers are well suited for current and voltage sensing in AC and brushless DC motor drives, industrial inverters, servo motor drives, wind power generation, solar panel power systems and general analog isolation.
As current flows through the external resistor in a motor drive implementation, the resulting analog voltage drop is sensed by an ACPL-790B/790A/7900 isolation amplifier, and it allows a proportional output voltage to safely be created on the other side of the optical isolation barrier. Competing solutions based on Hall Effect technology and current transformer technology suffer electrical parameter variation over temperature fluctuations and require a larger footprint in a design.
The ACPL-790B provides up to 0.5% high gain accuracy, and offers 200 kHz bandwidth and 1.6 μs response time to enable capture of transient signals in short circuit and overload conditions. The devices operate from a single 5V supply that is compatible with 3.3V outputs.
Pricing for the Avago ACPL-7900 series starts at $3.38 each in 10,000 piece quantities.