Download White Paper: Shorten System Design Time with Flexible RS-485 Transceivers

For over twenty years, RS-485 has been an extremely common wired communication interface in industrial applications. The balanced differential signal transmission characteristics of RS-485 can suppress common-mode noise and enable long-distance communication in noisy industrial environments. As a result, RS-485 has become a common communication port in most industrial applications such as factory automation, protective relays, photovoltaic inverters, electric meters, motor drivers, and building automation.

Depending on the requirements of the terminal devices, RS-485 networks must be designed for different bus power supplies, logic interface power supply voltages, network lengths, and throughput. Therefore, customers must select, test, and validate multiple RS-485 transceivers available on the market to meet unique application requirements. Additionally, system designers develop different printed circuit boards (PCBs) for the terminal and intermediate nodes in the network. This process consumes a significant amount of design bandwidth and resources, thereby increasing system design time and costs, and delaying time-to-market.

This introduction presents the White Paper on Shortening System Design Time and Reducing Costs with Flexible RS-485 Transceivers. The white paper discusses typical RS-485 network and termination requirements, network lengths, data rates, and stubs, and emphasizes that with the THVD1424, system designers can flexibly use it at any node position in any network (terminal or intermediate nodes), whether it is a slow or fast two-wire (half-duplex) or four-wire (full-duplex) setup. Therefore, when using the THVD1424, a universal PCB can be designed and configured through software to meet various application requirements, saving a significant amount of development time and effort.

The white paper Shortening System Design Time and Reducing Costs with Flexible RS-485 Transceivers covers the following content:

• Typical RS-485 network and termination requirements

• Network lengths, data rates, and stubs

• Discrete solutions for switchable termination and duplex switching

• Discrete solutions for duplex switching

• THVD1424 flexible RS-485

• THVD1424 application diagram

• Experimental results of THVD1424 four-node testing

• Conclusion

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