Renesas Electronics recently introduced the ASI4U-V5 ASSP – the industry’s first silicon solution to fully implement the ASi-5(Actuator Sensor Interface version specification version 5) standard for industrial network equipment. ASi-5 offers superior performance and usability over ASi-3, delivering 1.27 ms cycle time, 200m cable length and 96 slaves per segment. The field-proven ASSP delivers an easy-to-use fieldbus integration option for developers working with sensors, actuators, and other industrial equipment requiring easy and cost-efficient fieldbus connectivity.

The new ASI4U-V5 ASSP features a fully verified and field-proven firmware that reduces the complexity associated with ASi-5 implementations, allowing users to minimize design risks. The ASSP is fully backwards compatible with ASi-3 devices while incorporating the shorter cycle times, higher bandwidth resulting from the use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), enhanced diagnostics, and state-of-the-art robustness associated with the ASi-5 standard. The ASSP also supports all bus topologies, including line, star, and tree. Users can also take advantage of easy and cost-efficient integration with other industrial protocols such as IO-Link and HART.

Key Features of the Renesas ASI4U-V5 ASSP

  • The integration of up to 96 devices and operation down to 1.2 ms cycle time with less than 10ns jitter compared with 5 ms cycle times for ASi-3 solutions
  • Support for up to 200m cable and 16 data bits per transport channel
  • Diagnostics and event handling for industry 4.0 applications
  • Backwards compatibility with ASi-3 devices
  • Exceptional robustness against electromagnetic disturbers
  • Fully verified and field-proven firmware enables easy integration, as no further programming of the chip is required.

Availability

Reference samples of the fully qualified ASi-5 ASSP are available now. Mass production is planned for March 2020. For more details on the ASI4U-V5 ASSP, please visit: https://www.renesas.com/products/interface/industrial-network-transceivers/asi4u-v5.html