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TCA9517A Datasheet, PDF (9/17 Pages) Texas Instruments – LEVEL-TRANSLATING I2C BUS REPEATER
TCA9517A
www.ti.com
SCPS245A – DECEMBER 2012 – REVISED APRIL 2013
APPLICATION INFORMATION
A typical application is shown in Figure 6. In this example, the system master is running on a 3.3-V I2C bus, and
the slave is connected to a 1.2-V bus. Both buses run at 400 kHz. Master devices can be placed on either bus.
The TCA9517A is 5-V tolerant, so it does not require any additional circuitry to translate between 0.9-V to 5.5-V
bus voltages and 2.7-V to 5.5-V bus voltages.
When the A side of the TCA9517A is pulled low by a driver on the I2C bus, a comparator detects the falling edge
when it goes below 0.3 VCCA and causes the internal driver on the B side to turn on, causing the B side to pull
down to about 0.5 V. When the B side of the TCA9517A falls, first a CMOS hysteresis-type input detects the
falling edge and causes the internal driver on the A side to turn on and pull the A-side pin down to ground. In
order to illustrate what would be seen in a typical application, refer to Figure 8 and Figure 9. If the bus master in
Figure 6 were to write to the slave through the TCA9517A, waveforms shown in Figure 8 would be observed on
the A bus. This looks like a normal I2C transmission, except that the high level may be as low as 0.9 V, and the
turn on and turn off of the acknowledge signals are slightly delayed.
On the B-side bus of the TCA9517A, the clock and data lines would have a positive offset from ground equal to
the VOL of the TCA9517A. After the eighth clock pulse, the data line is pulled to the VOL of the slave device,
which is very close to ground in this example. At the end of the acknowledge, the level rises only to the low level
set by the driver in the TCA9517A for a short delay, while the A-bus side rises above 0.3 VCCA and then
continues high.
3.3 V
1.2 V
10 kW
SDA
BUS
MASTER
400 kHz
SCL
10 kW
10 kW
V V CCB
CCA
SDAB SDAA
SCLB SCLA
TCA9517A
EN
10 kW
SDA
SCL
SLAVE
400 kHz
BUS B
BUS A
Figure 6. Typical Application
VILC AND PULL-UP RESISTOR SIZING
For the TCA9517A to function correctly, all devices on the B-side must be able to pull the B-side below the
voltage input low contention level (VILC). This means that the VOL of any device on the B-side must be below
0.45V.
VOL of a device can be adjusted by changing the IOL through the device which is set by the pull-up resistance
value. The pull-up resistance on the B-side must be carefully selected to ensure that logic levels will be
transferred correctly to the A-side.
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