LTC2941-1_15 Datasheet, PDF (11/16 Pages) Linear Technology – 1A I2C Battery Gas Gauge with Internal Sense Resistor

LTC2941-1
Applications Information
device. In addition to transmitters and receivers, devices
can also be classified as masters or slaves when perform-
ing data transfers. A master is the device which initiates a
data transfer on the bus and generates the clock signals
to permit that transfer. At the same time any device ad-
dressed is considered a slave. The LTC2941-1 always
acts as a slave. Figure 4 shows an overview of the data
transmission on the I²C bus.
Start and Stop Conditions
When the bus is idle, both SCL and SDA must be high. A
bus master signals the beginning of a transmission with
a START condition by transitioning SDA from high to low
while SCL is high. When the master has finished com-
municating with the slave, it issues a STOP condition by
transitioning SDA from low to high while SCL is high. The
bus is then free for another transmission. When the bus is
in use, it stays busy if a repeated START (Sr) is generated
instead of a STOP condition. The repeated START (Sr)
conditions are functionally identical to the START (S).
Data Transmission
After a START condition, the I²C bus is considered busy
and data transfer begins between a master and a slave. As
data is transferred over I²C in groups of nine bits (eight
data bits followed by an acknowledge bit), each group
takes nine SCL cycles. The transmitter releases the SDA
line during the acknowledge clock pulse and the receiver
issues an acknowledge (ACK) by pulling SDA low or leaves
SDA high to indicate a not-acknowledge (NAK) condition.
Change of data state can only happen while SCL is low.
Write Protocol
The master begins communication with a START condition
followed by the seven bit slave address 1100100 and the
R/W bit set to zero, as shown in Figure 5. The LTC2941-
1 acknowledges this by pulling SDA low and then the
master sends a command byte which indicates which
internal register the master is to write. The LTC2941-1
acknowledges and then latches the command byte into its
internal register address pointer. The master delivers the
data byte, the LTC2941-1 acknowledges once more and
latches the data into the desired register. The transmission
is ended when the master sends a STOP condition. If the
master continues by sending a second data byte instead
of a stop, the LTC2941-1 acknowledges again, increments
its address pointer and latches the second data byte in the
following register, as shown in Figure 6.
Read Protocol
The master begins a read operation with a START condition
followed by the seven bit slave address 1100100 and the
R/W bit set to zero, as shown in Figure 7. The LTC2941-1
acknowledges and then the master sends a command byte
which indicates which internal register the master is to
read. The LTC2941-1 acknowledges and then latches the
command byte into its internal register address pointer. The
master then sends a repeated START condition followed
by the same seven bit address with the R/W bit now set
to one. The LTC2941-1 acknowledges and sends the con-
tents of the requested register. The transmission is ended
when the master sends a STOP condition. If the master
acknowledges the transmitted data byte, the LTC2941-1
increments its address pointer and sends the contents of
the following register as shown in Figure 8.
Alert Response Protocol
In a system where several slaves share a common inter-
rupt line, the master can use the alert response address
(ARA) to determine which device initiated the interrupt
(Figure 9).
The master initiates the ARA procedure with a START con-
dition and the special 7-bit ARA bus address (0001100)
followed by the read bit (R) = 1. If the LTC2941-1 is as-
serting the AL/CC pin in alert mode, it acknowledges and
responds by sending its 7-bit bus address (1100100) and
a 1. While it is sending its address, it monitors the SDA pin
to see if another device is sending an address at the same
time using standard I²C bus arbitration. If the LTC2941-1
is sending a 1 and reads a 0 on the SDA pin on the rising
edge of SCL, it assumes another device with a lower ad-
dress is sending and the LTC2941-1 immediately aborts
its transfer and waits for the next ARA cycle to try again.
If transfer is successfully completed, the LTC2941-1 will
stop pulling down the AL/CC pin and will not respond to
further ARA requests until a new alert event occurs.
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