Taishi Micro released the ultra-high integration automotive touch chip TCAE10

Market Background

As an important part of automobile intelligence, smart buttons and smart surfaces are currently in a rapid development stage. Capacitive touch buttons are increasingly used in automobile interior surfaces due to their convenience and small size. Smart surfaces of multi-way switches such as air conditioning control panels, gear controllers, seat armrests, door trims, and roof controllers require more MCU pins and on-chip resources. Taishiwei's TCAE12 series chips can well meet the needs of such applications.

In addition, there is another large category of applications such as reading lights, window control buttons, door handles, kick buttons, etc. that require the use of a small number of buttons, but have high requirements in terms of size and cost. The market needs a more optimized solution to meet the requirements for cost and volume.

Taishiwei's TCAE10x series (hereinafter referred to as TCAE10) is a highly integrated, low-cost, small-volume self-contained mixed-signal touch chip developed to meet higher cost and space requirements. In addition to the functional integration and superior performance of the TCAE12 series touch chips, TCAE10 further integrates LIN transceiver and high-voltage power supply, and integrates hardware waterproof analog modules, which greatly improves the waterproof effect, reduces overall power consumption, and further improves the touch signal-to-noise ratio and stability.

TCAE10 is currently the only automotive touch single-chip solution in the world that can achieve both ultra-high integration and ultra-high touch performance. TCAE10 has completely surpassed foreign chips, announcing the absolute leadership of Taishi Micro in the field of automotive touch chips in the world!

Product Features

• Working voltage 5.5V~18V, supports 40V load dump voltage

• Low power consumption deep sleep mode: 50uA, supports LIN wake-up

• Integrated high voltage LDO

• ARM Cortex M0 core, 48MHz high frequency clock, 64 KB with ECC Flash and 4 KB SRAM

• Integrated 5-channel self-capacitance detection, the capacitor charging and discharging frequency is adjustable and supports frequency modulation mode

• Support analog shielding electrode function

• 9 GPIO channels, 5 of which support ADC input, including a pair of differential input channels

• 14-bit SAR ADC, 500K SPS for fast capacitance sampling

• Supports PGA with offset voltage compensation, 1x-16x adjustable gain

• Support SPI and UART serial ports

• 4-channel 16-bit PWM

• Integrated LIN transceiver physical layer

• The data link layer complies with LIN2.x and J2602 standards

• The LIN interface supports switching between 115Kbps high-speed mode and 20Kbps normal mode

• Internal integrated temperature sensor, room temperature accuracy range ±3°C

• Independent SWD high-speed programming interface for fast programming of production lines, greatly improving production efficiency

• The power supply pin VS complies with ISO7637 and ISO16750 surge and transient voltage standards

• PackageDFN16 3mm*4mm

• AEC-Q100 Grade 1, Tj=-40°C~150°C

Chip internal block diagram

Figure 1 System framework diagram

Product Advantages

Minimal peripheral components save overall BOM cost

EMC requirements are fully considered during the product design phase, and only a few peripheral components are needed to meet automotive EMC requirements.

Nationally produced industrial chain single chip design improves cost performance and reliability

TCAE10 adopts the leading national industrial chain mixed-signal single-wafer process, integrating high-voltage analog, embedded storage and other analog and digital peripherals into a single chip, while optimizing the chip functions and performance to achieve a better balance in terms of cost and performance.

High performance self-capacitive capacitance detection

• The application block diagram of TCAE10 is shown in Figure 2. The analog shielding electrode function provides good waterproof performance. When the shield channel is working, the waveform following the detection channel is shown in Figures 3 and 4.

• The capacitance detection method based on the charge balance principle provides high signal-to-noise ratio and anti-interference performance. The SNR signal-to-noise ratio waveform is shown in Figure 5.

• Adjustable capacitor to detect charge and discharge time and frequency

• Customize the number and frequency of charge and discharge to balance performance and power consumption

• FM mode improves external radiation

• Analog switch mode charging and discharging reduces the voltage rise and fall edges during charging and discharging, and reduces external radiation

• Mature baseline tracking algorithm to cope with complex external environment changes

Figure 2 TCAE10 typical application

Figure 3 1 detection cycle (CH1-yellow shield electrode waveform, CH2-green touch electrode waveform)

Figure 4 Shield waveform of one charge and discharge (CH1-yellow touch electrode waveform, CH2-green shield electrode waveform)

Figure 5 SNR high signal-to-noise ratio

Low power consumption

Thanks to the single-chip design of TCAE10, the power consumption modes between internal units can be flexibly configured to meet the power consumption mode requirements of various application scenarios.

In a typical application scenario, the chip supports LIN wake-up mode and its standby power consumption can be less than 50uA, which can easily meet the power consumption requirements of almost all car manufacturers for components and leave enough power consumption margin for peripheral auxiliary circuits.

High production efficiency

Independent SWD debugging and burning interface to meet the needs of fast program burning and debugging of the production line.

Good LIN compatibility

The TCAE10 LIN transceiver and data link layer are based on Taishiwei's mature LIN transceiver IP design, which can well meet the latest LIN compatibility requirements such as LIN2.X and SAEJ2602:2021.

Excellent EMC characteristics

TCAE10 has focused on EMC issues since the chip design stage, added necessary protection measures in the power management, LDO and other circuit designs, and improved PSRR performance, so that the TCAE10 solution can easily pass the tests of relevant EMC standards such as ISO7637, ISO16750, ISO11452, CISPR25, SAEJ2962-1, etc.

High operating ambient temperature

TCAE10 supports a maximum operating temperature of 150°C, effectively meeting the needs of high-temperature application scenarios such as small-sized, high-brightness reading lights.

Typical application scenarios

Including reading lights, door handles, tailgate kick, steering wheel hands-off detection, window lift switch, etc. (Figure 6-Figure 9).

Figure 6 1-way or 2-way reading light

Figure 7 Door handle (single switch or double switch)

Figure 8 Tailgate kick detection

Figure 9 Hands-off-steering detection (single-zone, 2-zone or 3-zone mode, optional shield electrode)

Ecosystem, tools and technical support

In order to facilitate users to quickly evaluate solutions and help projects land quickly, Taishiwei provides TCAE10 EVK development board for users to use, and provides a complete SDK development package. For details, please contact sales@tinychip.com.cn.

Figure 10 Ecosystem Toolkit