Digital Isolation Technology: Safety and Data Integrity Throughout

Jen Lloyd, Vice President, Precision Technology and Platforms, Analog Devices

In today's world of increasing electrification and digitalization, it is more important than ever to protect people, valuable assets and critical data from high voltage and other interference. Digital isolation technology can solve this challenge. As factory automation, electric vehicles and advanced digital medical devices rapidly upgrade, trusted safety and data integrity become critical.

As high-performance and sensitive electronic systems are increasingly used, digital isolation must be considered in every design . Digital isolation technology provides an electrical barrier to protect data from damaging electromagnetic interference (EMI) and forms a safety boundary between high voltage and people, equipment, and data. Many applications require this isolation technology, including medical devices, electric vehicles, and industrial equipment. This isolation boundary allows engineers to design with confidence, knowing that the application will meet functional and safety goals.

Digital isolation technology is an essential element that must be included in every design.

Digital isolation technology provides an electrical barrier to protect data from damaging electromagnetic interference and forms a safety boundary between high voltage and people, assets and data.

From medical devices to vital sign monitors to defibrillators, digital healthcare technology is advancing exponentially. With this growth comes more sophisticated measurements, and the need for digital isolation to protect those measurements and the people making them from high voltages and electromagnetic interference. Properly transmitting those measurements without the effects of high voltages and electromagnetic interference allows the data to maintain higher integrity. Higher quality data leads to more accurate diagnoses, better insights, and ultimately better treatment outcomes.

Digital isolation technology provides high immunity to RF interference , ensuring that these critical medical data used in medical systems can accurately reflect the patient's health status.

Electronic medical devices are susceptible to electrostatic discharge (ESD), which can render the devices unreliable and, in some cases, unsafe.

The technology plays an important role in ensuring that medical data provides accurate insights to doctors. It helps doctors “first do no harm” to patients and enables technicians to safely operate high-voltage diagnostic systems.

In the future, Gigabit isolation will enable higher image quality and faster test times. It will provide less intrusive testing for patients and more flexible testing site/system design options, leading to higher quality diagnoses.

Modern factories have been transformed through digital transformation, using accurate plant-wide data to drive smarter decisions, increasing automation, flexibility, and customization to meet new demands. Manufacturers need a complete understanding of the health of these expensive production lines. To ensure stable, reliable, and long operating life, the integrity of machine health data used to plan downtime and implement predictive maintenance is critical. This business-critical data must reach its destination intact. Digital isolation technology is a key component of these systems, providing excellent noise immunity and ensuring reliable and stable data communications, thereby achieving accurate, reliable system operation and high uptime.

Advanced Gigabit isolation enables faster distribution of larger batches of data between the analog front end and processing nodes, and enhances immunity to interference in harsh industrial environments.

Additionally, digital isolation technology can ensure the safety of people in these industrial environments. Technological advances have allowed robots and cobots to work alongside people on factory floors, but many of these machines require advanced isolation technology to ensure the safety of people around them. These devices use very advanced sensing solutions to reliably send and receive data, so the robot/cobot moves in a predictable manner, keeping the workers around them highly safe.

As the world becomes more reliant on electrification, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are being deployed at an accelerated pace and are continually innovating to improve performance. These renewable energy sources are increasingly being integrated with new energy storage and battery technologies, eliminating the challenges of day/night variations or intermittent wind speeds that solar and wind face. With the increasing power density of inverters used in solar PV, and the need for energy storage balancing, this generation of solar power requires intensive monitoring of all elements of these systems. Isolation technology provides a safe, reliable, and durable solution for communication interfaces and power conversion control.

Embedding isolation into gate driver technology, enabled by new wide-bandgap materials including silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) , is a critical building block for power conversion in renewable energy applications and related battery energy storage applications. Battery energy storage is key to harnessing these intermittent energy sources to power our homes, as well as charging electric vehicles faster and extending the time between charges.

Digital isolation in its basic form protects our safety when we use electric vehicles, allowing us to feel good about reducing harmful emissions while ensuring we can safely drive and charge our electric vehicles.

Now more than ever, our electrified and automated digital future requires higher levels of safety and data integrity to protect the increasingly complex and sensitive electronics at its core. Digital isolation technology protects people and assets from high voltages and safeguards critical data from destructive electronic interference.

1 Mehdi Kohani and Michael Pecht. Medical Device Failures Induced by Static Electricity: A Big Data Analysis of 10 Years of FDA Reports. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, March 9, 2018.

2 Richard Strube. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Challenges in the Electronics Industry. Universal Instruments, July 6, 2015.

3 Erik Johnson. An Introduction to Electric Vehicle Battery Systems. All About Circuits, July 31, 2019

When you design your next breakthrough project, look to Analog Devices, the inventor and undisputed leader of digital isolators, for innovative solutions. Let us focus on digital isolation technology while you focus on creating a sustainable future.