Infineon Launches New ISOFACE™ Digital Input Product Family for Industrial Control and Automation Systems - Smarter and More Robust Than Today's Solutions

The new ISOFACE™ Digital Input products expand Infineon Technologies' innovative product segment of galvanic isolated interfaces for industrial control and automation applications. The ISOFACE™ Digital Input product family ISO1I811T and ISO1I813T is demonstrated at Embedded World 2011 tradeshow in Nuremberg, Germany (hall 12: Infineon: booth 12, EBV: booth 458, Arrow: booth 366). The new ISOFACE™ Digital Input products offer an integrated galvanic isolation of 500VAC (EN60664-1, UL508), based on the proven technology already used in Infineon's ISOFACE™ Digital Output products. This technology provides robust galvanic isolation between the inputs - such as sensors or switches - of a control system on the one-hand and the microcontroller or bus ASIC on the other-hand. The high level of functional integration combined with good energy-efficiency turns ISOFACE™ Digital Input products into key enablers for highly compact and cost-efficient industrial control solutions such as input cards or sensor modules. Compared with alternative solutions they enable up to four times more channels on the same PCB (Printed Circuit Board) area. The ISOFACE™ Digital Input products sample information from multiple digital sources - such as sensors - in the automation system and transfer it to the CPU. The new Infineon solution offers communication frequencies of up to 500 kHz, substantially exceeding the traditional solutions, which depend on optocouplers. Therefore, they are ideally suited for high-precision or high-speed applications like bottling machines or paper producing and printing equipment. To improve the EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) robustness of the control systems each of the 8 inputs (according to IEC61131-2 / Type 1/2/3) of the ISO1I813T has individually programmable deglitching filters. In addition, the product's channel-specific diagnostic capability supports detection of failures like input wire-break between a sensor and an IC input. Furthermore, the device's supply voltage on the input side is monitored and in case of failures a two-staged warning signal is being sent to the CPU. These features greatly improve factory level maintenance and provide a significant contribution to minimize costly factory-floor down-times. "The ISOFACE™ Digital Input family delivers very tangible benefits to OEMs and their customers," said Kurt Marquardt, Senior Director Marketing ASIC & Power IC of Infineon Technologies. „Infineon's new solution is much more energy-efficient, compact and reliable than any other solution. Thanks to the comprehensive diagnostic features, costly down-times can be significantly reduced." Based on IMS Research (report August, 2010) the industrial control market size is projected to be 6.5 million systems in 2011 and poised to grow by 10 percent going forward. This translates into an annual market potential of well over 30 million units for the ISOFACE™ Digital Input products. Availability Samples of the new ISOFACE™ Digital Input products ISO1I811T and ISO1I813T as well as evaluation boards are available as of now. Further information about ISOFACE™ products can be found at: www.infineon.com/isoface