IDT and Fudan Microelectronics to offer turnkey smart meter reference design for smart grid apps

SAN JOSE, USA: Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) has joined forces with Fudan Microelectronics to provide a turn-key smart meter reference design to shorten the development cycle of smart meter manufacturers, improving time-to-market and lowering costs. The new reference design leverages IDT’s award-winning 90E2x wide-range power metering device and Fudan Microelectronics’ FM3308 microcontroller unit (MCU) for next generation smart meter applications.

IDT’s 90E2x power metering IC offers the industry’s widest dynamic range of 5000:1, enabling meter manufacturers to simplify their product designs using a single IC and bill of materials (BOM) instead of different ICs and BOMs for different meter types. Alongside the IDT device is Fudan Microelectronics’ FM3308 MCU chip, comprised of an 8-bit TURBO 51 MCU core, program memory and RAM, LCD driver, RTC, UARTs, and hardware ISO 7816 protocol stack – providing a competitive feature set, high-performance, and further simplifying the circuit. This reference design meets or exceeds the Chinese standards and requirements for turn-key usage in a myriad of smart meter applications.

“With their high-performance and technologically superior metering devices, IDT is the ideal company for collaboration on this reference design,” said Lei Shen, deputy chief engineer of Fudan Microelectronics. “By combining IDT’s metering analog front-end (AFE) with our latest MCU designed for smart meters, customers can quickly take the design into certification and mass production. This is especially valuable for meter manufacturers who have tight design bandwidth and schedule.”

“IDT is responding to its customers’ demand for system solutions by partnering with a leading MCU supplier in China,” said Sean Fan, VP and GM of IDT China. “Through this collaboration, we are able to provide our customers with not only a turn-key solution, but also improved service from local perspective. Reference designs such as this allow us to accelerate our market penetration in smart meters for the global smart grid market.”