LTC1960
12
Rev. C
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OPERATION
OVERVIEW
The LTC1960 is composed of a battery charger controller,
charge MUX controller, PowerPath controller, SPI inter-
face, a 10-bit current DAC (IDAC) and 11-bit voltage DAC
(VDAC). When coupled with a low cost microprocessor, it
forms a complete battery charger/selector system for two
batteries. The battery charger is programmed for voltage
and current, and the charging battery is selected via the
SPI interface. Charging can be accomplished only if the
voltage at DCDIV indicates that sufficient voltage is avail-
able from the input power source, usually an AC adapter.
The charge MUX, which selects the battery to be charged,
is capable of charging both batteries simultaneously by
selecting both batteries for charging. The charge MUX
switch drivers are configured to allow charger current to
share between the two batteries and to prevent current
from flowing in a reverse direction in the switch. The
amount of current that each battery receives will depend
upon the relative capacity of each battery and the battery
voltage. This can result in significantly shorter charging
times (up to 50% for Li-Ion batteries) than sequential
charging of each battery. In order to continue charging,
the CHARGE_BAT information must be updated more
frequently than the internal watchdog timer.
The PowerPath controller selects which of the pairs of
PFET switches, input and output, will provide power to
the system load. The selection is accomplished over
the SPI interface. If the system voltage drops below the
threshold set by the LOPWR resistor divider, then all of
the output side PFETs are turned on quickly and power
is taken from the highest voltage source available at the
DCIN, BAT1 or BAT2 inputs. The input side PFETs act as
diodes in this mode and power is taken from the source
with the highest voltage. The input side PowerPath switch
driver that is delivering power then closes its input switch
to reduce the power dissipation in the PFET bulk diode. In
effect, this system provides diode -like behavior from the
FET switches, without the attendant high power dissipa-
tion from diodes. The microprocessor is informed of this
3-diode mode status when it polls the PowerPath status
register via the SPI interface. The microprocessor can then
assess which power source is capable of providing power,
and program the PowerPath switches accordingly. Since
high speed PowerPath switching at LOPWR trip points
is handled autonomously, there is no need for real-time
microprocessor resources to accomplish this task.
Simultaneous discharge of both batteries is accomplished
by simply programming both batteries for discharge into
the system load. The switch drivers prevent reverse current
flow in the switches and automatically discharge both bat-
teries into the load, sharing current according to the relative
capacity of the batteries. Simultaneous dual discharge can
increase battery operating time by approximately 10%
by reducing losses in the switches and reducing internal
losses associated with high discharge rates.
SPI Interface
The SPI interface is used to write to the internal PowerPath
registers, the charger control registers, the current DAC,
and the voltage DAC. The SPI is also able to read internal
status registers. There are two types of SPI write com-
mands. The first write command is a 1-byte command used
to load PowerPath and charger control bits. The second
write command is a 2-byte command used to load the
DACs. The SPI read command is a 2-byte command. In
order to ensure the integrity of the SPI communication,
the last bit received by the SPI is echoed back over the
MISO output after the next falling SCK. The data format
is set up so that the master has the option of aborting a
write if the returned MISO bit is not as expected.
(Refer to Block Diagram and Typical Application)