Smart grid market trends and ON Semiconductor’s smart meter solutions

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The smart grid is built on the basis of an integrated, high-speed two-way communication network, and aims to use advanced sensing and measurement technology, advanced equipment technology, advanced control methods, and advanced decision support system technology to achieve a reliable, safe, economical, and efficient power grid. Environmentally friendly and safe to use for efficient operation. This article will talk about the smart grid and smart meter market, and introduce ON Semiconductor’s smart grid and smart meter solutions as the premier high-performance and energy-efficient silicon solution provider for green electronic products.

The fast-growing smart grid and smart meter market

Driven by the awareness of green energy conservation, smart grids with smart meters as the core have become a key area for development in various countries around the world. The development of smart grids can also benefit public utilities and users. For example, smart grids can help power organizations reduce operating expenses, reduce electricity theft, optimize operations, and respond to user needs immediately. Users also have the opportunity to enjoy more flexible pricing, save costs due to network metering and help realize home automation. In addition, the development of smart grids also faces other favorable factors, such as deregulation and increased competition, and the emergence of various wireless standards (ZigBee, PLC, Wi-Fi, WiMax, and cellular mobile communications, etc.).

Driven by these favorable factors, the development prospects of smart grids are quite promising. Taking smart meters as an example, global shipments are expected to grow from just a few million units in 2008 to approximately 50 million units in 2014, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of up to 48%. From the perspective of technological trends, in the future, there will be super two-way real-time communication and open platform/modular services. System integration will also be an important future trend. It is expected that renewable, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and home automation will be integrated into smart grid systems. Smart meters will also adopt Advanced Metering System (AMI) and become an integral part of the future home area network (HAN).

ON Semiconductor’s smart meter solution based on AMIS-49587 and NCS5650

The medium and low voltage AC distribution lines used for power transmission can also be used as the transmission medium for data communication. Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication technology is a technology for high-speed transmission of analog or digital signals on power distribution lines through carrier waves. The use of the existing power distribution network for communication does not require rewiring, and the signal will not be attenuated and shielded through the building walls, and the cost is lower. This makes this technology available in many fields such as automatic meter reading systems and lighting control. Favored.

ON Semiconductor has developed a spread spectrum type frequency shift keying (S-FSK) PLC modem (Modem)-AMIS-49587 for low/medium voltage power line data communication. It is a highly integrated low-power PLC solution that meets the IEC61334 standard. It is suitable for smart grid automatic meter reading and management, street lighting control, smart power plugs, and building automation. This is the second-generation PLC modem product developed by ON Semiconductor after the early AMIS-30585. Its core is a 32-bit ARM processor, which completes the processing of the physical layer and the MAC layer, and runs the S-FSK modulation and demodulation algorithm. It also manages communication with external MCUs. The device includes all analog and digital parts of S-FSK signal processing, MCU interface management, etc. AMIS-49587 supports Advanced Metering System (AMI), which is used for two-way communication between utilities and electric meters, supports remote meter reading, disconnection of switch connections and load control. At present, only about 8% of the 2.65 billion electricity meters in the world are automated electricity meters. Therefore, the application prospects of modem chips supporting smart meter applications such as AMIS-49587 are very broad.

AMIS-49587 is a narrow-band PLC transceiver that uses S-FSK modulation and precise filtering. It can realize long-distance power line rugged low data rate communication and 2,400 bps half-duplex adjustable rate communication. The low operating frequency of less than 20 kHz and the automatic repeater function make the communication more reliable, and the communication error is lower than the existing scheme. This device is currently the only device with more than 8 years of successful application verification in the industrial field.

AMIS-49587 utilizes ON Semiconductor’s mixed-signal technology to integrate analog modem front-end and digital post-processing functions in an integrated circuit. Its most prominent feature is that, as a PLC transceiver, in addition to the completion of the physical layer S-FSK signal transmission and reception, modulation and demodulation, it also includes the media access controller (MAC) sub-layer processing, so that designers do not need to involve PHY And MAC protocol transmission details, put more energy on the development of the application layer, while most competing solutions require complex embedded software to perform the same functions as AMIS-49587.

The logical link layer (LLC Layer) data packet exchange is carried out through AMIS-49587, and the frame header and frame check of the bottom layer are automatically added. This greatly reduces the workload of customer software development, simplifies design, reduces development and application costs, and accelerates the listing process. These advantages make AMIS-49587 a PLC communication core device that fully meets the technical requirements of smart grids.

In addition, ON Semiconductor has also launched an energy-efficient Class A/B low-distortion line driver-NCS5650 for smart meter PLC line drive applications. The power supply voltage (VCC) of this device is 6 to 12 V single-ended or ±3.0 to 6.0 V double-balanced. The design of NCS5650 has been optimized to receive the signal transmitted by the PLC modem, and the output section is designed to be able to drive up to 2 A current, coupled to the AC mains power supply via an isolation transformer or a simple coil.

NCS5650 meets the application requirements of PLC line drivers and provides important application advantages. For example, this device is optimized for the A, B, C and D frequency bands used by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) for smart meters. It meets the EN-50065 specification and can be used for direct coupling or 1:1, 2:1 transformation ratio. coupling. The unique 2 A drive capability of NCS5650 ensures effective communication even at very low power line impedance.

NCS5650 also has advantages in electrical performance. The two-stage operational amplifier can achieve a full power bandwidth of 700 kHz, and the harmonic distortion is also very low, only 0.015% @ 1 kHz. The power consumption of this device is also very low, the rail-to-rail voltage difference is only 0.5 V, the quiescent current is only 20 mA, and the current in shutdown mode is only 150 μA.

Figure 1 is a block diagram of a PLC solution using AMIS-49587. The program is mainly composed of PLC Modem, AMIS-49587, drive amplifier NCS5650 and coupling transformer.


Figure 1: PLC solution using AMIS-49587 and NCS5650

The red arrow in the figure is the sending path of the PLC signal. The S-FSK signal modulated by AMIS-49587 is amplified by NCS5650 and coupled to the power line via a transformer. The transformer realizes voltage conversion and impedance matching, and can also be used to isolate strong and weak currents. In addition to signal power amplification, the NCS5650’s two-stage operational amplifier structure also forms a 4th-order low-pass filter with very steep attenuation characteristics. In Europe, where there are strict restrictions on power line access equipment, only by adding a similar filter can the system’s high-frequency interference injection to the power line meet the requirements of EN 50065.

The blue arrow indicates the receiving path. The signal coupled by the transformer from the power line is FSK demodulated and analyzed by the internal ARM through the low-pass filter composed of the AMIS-49587 built-in amplifier. The black arrow in the figure is the 50 Hz zero-crossing detection signal pin. The system relies on this signal for synchronization timing. The blue dotted line in the figure is the application processor in the meter, which is responsible for the application layer to handle communication and metering.

The power supply of this scheme is very simple: a 12V power supply is used to power the line amplifier, which is used to drive the PLC signal coupling transformer; a 3.3V power supply is used to power AMIS-49587.

ON Semiconductor’s complete solution for smart meters

ON Semiconductor’s solution for smart meters includes a series of standard products, application-specific standard products (ASSP) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), which can provide the four basic functions of smart meters, including: power/power management, metering, storage and Communications, specific products include power factor controllers, AC-DC (AC-DC) controllers, DC-DC (DC-DC) controllers, voltage regulators, MOSFETs, rectifiers, triacs (TRIAC) ), PLC modem, line driver and signal amplifier, filtering, input/output (I/O) and data protection, LCD backlight driver, EEPROM memory, and smart card interface, etc. Figure 2 is a smart meter application composed of a variety of devices from ON Semiconductor (the green part in the figure).


Figure 2: Smart meter application composed of various products of ON Semiconductor

As shown in Figure 2, there are many ON Semiconductor products that constitute smart meter applications. In addition to the above-mentioned AMIS-49587 PLC modem and NCS5650 PLC line driver, they also include: input/output protection (for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI) )Filtered data filter, ESD protection diode and array, voltage monitor for current and voltage management), input/output interface (data filter, PLL clock generator), smart card and SIM card interface, I/O expansion Voltage protection devices (diodes and rectifiers, transient voltage suppressors), operational amplifiers and comparators, power amplifiers, power line modems, EEPROM and SRAM memories, LCD backlight drivers and image/ambient light sensors, input bridge rectifiers, voltage regulators Switch (AC-DC controller and regulator), output rectification/synchronous rectification (Schottky diode and rectifier), linear regulator switch (voltage reference, display driver, controller, linear regulator, converter, charge Pump) and so on.

Among them, the data filter NUF2042XV6 for input/output protection is a single-chip device specially developed for applications requiring line termination, EMI filtering and ESD protection. Its bidirectional EMI can prevent noise entering/exiting the system and save component costs. The transient voltage suppressor (TVS) P6KE6 series for voltage protection can prevent voltage sensitive components from being affected by high voltage and high energy transients. It has good clamping capability, high surge capability, low impedance Zener and fast response. Time and other characteristics. NOA1302 is a wide dynamic range ambient light sensor (ALS) that integrates 16-bit ADC and 2-wire I2C digital interface. It uses programmable integration to optimize noise performance and can provide linear response in the range of nearly 0 lux to more than 100,000 lux; the sensor Using ON Semiconductor’s proprietary CMOS image sensing technology, it provides low noise and high dynamic range output signals and a light response similar to the response of the human eye.

Summarize

When developing smart grids and smart meters, designers need to choose suitable solutions. The various solutions provided by ON Semiconductor for smart grid and smart meter applications comply with various standards and customer specifications, and have many advantages such as simplified design, lower costs, lower power consumption, reliable communications, and faster time-to-market.

Contributed by ON Semiconductor

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