Innovative Smart Switch Architecture Catering to 12 Volts to 48 Volts Battery Bus Requirements

Electronics is entering rapidly into all automotive subsystems, performing control and monitoring tasks apart from making the entire vehicle intelligent. Interface with the external automotive eco-system needs careful attention during the system design. It defines how seamlessly the electronic unit interacts with rest of the vehicle. It needs to do so in an effective manner without compromising on cost and other automotive application constraints. This paper focusses on the “smart switch building block” that forms heart of an automotive output interface echo system.: Its importance stems from the fact that, a smart switch is an indispensable building block for any electronic control system driving external loads. As various novel electical and electronics architectures are entering various vehicle segments, the need for a single reusable solution that will cater to 12 Volts to 48 Volts battery buses is increasingly being felt. However, no prevelant solution meets this requirement. Even for 12 volts and 24 volts buses different solutions are sometimes required to be used. Other areas where the existing solutions need improvement include ease of hardware and software interface apart from lack of robust short-circuit protections. Diagnostics architecture of currently available (legacy) smart switch solutions add to the complexity of the interface for interpretation of the malfunctions. This paper proposes a novel architecture that attempts to address all these short-comings across the buses. This not only reduces the time to market but also reduces engineering and Bill of Material (BOM) costs due to a frugally engineered solution.