In automotive and industrial applications
Up to 50% board space and BOM cost savings

Texas Instruments (TI) (President and CEO Kent Jeon) today announced the industry’s first resolver sensor interface IC with integrated power supply, excitation amplifier and “functional safety” features.

The new device is capable of exciting a resolver sensor coil while simultaneously calculating the angle and speed of a rotating motor shaft, without the external components used in competing solutions.

The PGA411-Q1 resolver-to-digital converter is designed to help developers increase system accuracy and stability for end products such as hybrid electric vehicle (HEV/EV) traction inverters, electric power steering, integrated start-stop generators, industrial alternating current (AC) servo motor control, and robotic arm control.



The PGA411-Q1 reduces bill of materials (BOM) costs and PCB space by up to 50% by eliminating the need for at least 10 external components and passive components. It also integrates an excitation amplifier, a high-voltage boost power supply with short-circuit protection, and programmable fault detection thresholds and filters, supporting a wide range of resolver sensors from 4 Vrms to 7 Vrms, without requiring external circuitry.

By incorporating built-in self-test (BIST), it automatically performs self-tests of analog and logic components at startup, improving the detection rate of potential faults. By embedding self-test and diagnostic functions, it eliminates the need for external protection circuits and enables developers to develop systems that meet the ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) D functional safety requirements of ISO 26262, differentiating it from competing solutions.

It provides overvoltage, undervoltage, and thermal protection. For example, it separates high-current and high-voltage blocks from damage-prone parts such as the analog front end (AFE). In addition, the AFE integrated comparator improves stability by reducing the influence of quantization noise on the input signal from the sensor, since no external analog-to-digital converter is required.

It also has programmable features such as internal clocks, AFEs, and enhanced diagnostics and protection features to meet a variety of resolver sensor and system requirements. Developers can easily change internal parameters, allowing them to migrate to new platform designs without the extensive engineering effort typically required to change hardware designs or debug new systems.

“Functional safety” can be achieved by combining the PGA411-Q1 resolver-to-digital converter with TI’s C2000™ F28379 microcontroller (MCU) and DesignDRIVE Position Manager technology. DesignDRIVE Position Manager technology provides developers with the foundational functions they need to interface with resolver sensors, reducing development, support and test time for industrial servo and AC inverter drives.