Semiconductor : HERMES

EBV has teamed-up with ON Semiconductor and developed the Hermes M-Bus Transceiver as an EBVchip that reduces power consumption offering significant advantages. Hermes meets the M-Bus specifications in full. The new EBVchip offers space reduction, lower cost and additional functions that enable a range of attractive new designs.

This EBVchip employs a relatively complex mixed-signal design, which was developed by the former AMIS team within ON Semiconductor. As with all EBVchips, this is an official chip from the respective manufacturer designed to the corresponding quality, although it is only available worldwide from EBV Elektronik. Hermes is housed in a 4 x 4 mm QFN-20 package, thus saving a good 60% of the IC footprint compared with the previous solution, which was packaged in an SO-16.

In addition, the classic transceiver can only drive a maximum of two M-Bus loads, which means that the slaves can only draw up to 3 mA per node. With higher power consumption levels, it used to be the case that two conventional M-Bus chips had to be installed in parallel so that four M-Bus loads could be used. Hermes is designed such that up to four programmable M-Bus loads can be connected.

If required, you can even connect up to six M-Bus loads to a component, although this feature is not covered in the official M-Bus standard. The M-Bus loads can be programmed with the aid of an external resistor. At 38.4 kbit/s, the useful data rate of Hermes is also significantly higher than that of the well-established M-Bus component. To produce the new EBVchip, ON Semiconductor uses a tried-and-tested automotive process to safeguard supply over a long period of time.