AB Transceiver Supporting 50W Bus Power and Extended Distance

The AD2437 A2B® transceiver provides a multichannel, I2S/TDM link over distances of up to 30 m between nodes. It embeds bidirectional synchronous pulse-code modulation (PCM) data (for example, digital audio), clock, and synchronization signals onto a single-pair differential cable. A2B supports a direct point to point connection and allows multiple, daisy-chained nodes at different locations to contribute and/or consume time division multiplexed channel content.

A2B is a single main node, multiple subordinate node system where the transceiver at the host controller is the main node. The main node generates clock, synchronization, and framing for all subordinate nodes. The main A2B transceiver is programmable over a control port (I2C/SPI) for configuration and read back. An extension of the control port protocol is embedded in the A2B data stream. This allows direct access to registers and status information on subordinate transceivers, as well as I2C to I2C, SPI to I2C, or SPI to SPI communication from the host to a peripheral in a subordinate node. SPI to SPI communication between subordinate nodes can be performed directly and does not need to involve the main node.

The transceiver can connect directly to general-purpose digital signal processors (DSPs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), digital microphones, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and codecs through a multichannel I2S/TDM interface. It also provides a pulse density modulation (PDM) interface for direct connection of up to four PDM digital microphones.

The transceiver supports a bus power feature, where the main node supplies voltage and current to the subordinate nodes over the same daisy-chained, single-pair wire or XLR/DMX cable as used for the communication link.

The transceiver also supports a broad spectrum of Ethernet cables in which the A2B occupies only one pair of a category (CAT) cable. This frees up the remaining CAT cable pairs for power delivery.

APPLICATIONS

* Conference room transducer nodes

* Musical instrument connectivity

* Distributed audio systems

* Personal audio zones

* Line topology

* Single main node, up to 16 subordinate nodes

* Up to 30 m between nodes and up to 300 m overall cable length

* Communication over distance

* Synchronous data

* Multichannel I2S/TDM to I2S/TDM

* Clock synchronous, phase aligned in all nodes

* Low latency node to node communication

* Control and status information I2C to I2C

* GPIO over distance

* Bus power or local power subordinate nodes

* Configurable with SigmaStudio+ graphical software tool