austriamicrosystems Introduces New Single Phase, Anti-Tamper LCD Energy Metering IC

austriamicrosystems announced the latest addition to its energy metering IC family with the launch of the AS8268 single-phase system-on-chip metering IC with embedded flash memory. The AS8268 offers an integrated system-on-chip solution for LCD meters and provides for secure program and data through its on-chip high-performance flash memory. The AS8268 is also claimed to fulfill all utility anti-tamper requirements and accommodates a customer-specified LCD display. Meter implementations based on AS8268 require a minimum of external components, inherently improving meter reliability and reduced meter system cost.

The AS8268 incorporates all the required functional blocks for single-phase metering including a precision energy measurement front-end, an 8-bit microcontroller, 32kBytes of on-chip flash memory, a real-time clock, 96-segment liquid crystal display (LCD) driver, 12 programmable multi-purpose inputs/outputs for all possible customer-specified interfaces and display requirements, as well as an on-chip temperature sensor.

"The extremely reliable austriamicrosystems flash memory technology provided on-chip ensures program and data retention performance never before available to the metering industry in system-on-chip ICs" said Matjaz Novak, Marketing Director Industry & Medical at austriamicrosystems. "Furthermore, the flash memory has been designed and verified to operate over an extended operating temperature range of -40 to +125°C."

The AS8268 offers the option of using an external EEPROM of 2 to 32kBytes for data retention, in conjunction with the fully programmable industry standard 8-bit 8051 compatible microcontroller (MCU) and 32kBytes on-chip Flash memory. Two universal asynchronous receiver transmitters (UARTs) provide for external communication. A programmable energy LED pulse output can be displayed through one of the multi-purpose input/outputs. This precision output along with an on-chip pulse counter allows for the option of fast automatic digital calibration. An on-chip ±1.4ppm real-time clock/calendar (RTC) with two alarm registers and battery back-up is available for complex tariff applications, with the option of added precision through the on-chip temperature sensor. Active energy, MAINS voltage and MAINS current is calculated directly within the on-chip digital signal processor (DSP). Reactive power and apparent power can also be calculated by user configurable application software.

The AS8268 is available in a LQFP-64 pin package and is pin-compatible with the currently available AS8218 and AS8228. Samples of the AS8268 will be available later in Q2 2007.