AnSem participated in the development of an automotive ASIC by designing multiple sensor interfaces, monitoring and wake up circuits. Multiple safety functions (ISO26262) were implemented to keep track of any kind of malfunction of the external sensors. To meet the functional safety standard as well as the AEC-Q100 qualification standard, all functionality was qualified for 6-sigma performance. The design was executed in a proprietary 130nm BCD technology.
- The torque sensor interface is a current interface which needs to be active in standby mode. Therefore it was designed for extremely low power consumption.
- The position sensor interface is able to sense multiple Magneto-resistive and Hall sensors. It converts an analog input to analog and digital outputs.
- A wake-up circuit is able to start up the ASIC, based on the ignition key input and the CAN-driver.
- A building block for monitoring the phases of the three-phase motor control signals.
- A SENT interface is implemented for synchronizing the ASIC with the external sensors. This SENT pulls current pulses up to 20mA.
- An external temperature sensor keeps track of the temperature at any moment by interfacing external resistors. It detects overtemperature with a controllable threshold.
In all of these blocks multiple safety functions were implemented to keep track of any kind of malconnection/malfunction of the external interfaces.