Figure 5 Bilateral arbitration of a bidirectional bus

Figure 6 Bilateral arbitration enabling bus amplification

Due to the generic nature of the circuit, bilateral arbitration can be applied to
any split-bus application. Figure 6 shows bilateral arbitration applied to
amplification. This can easily be extended to media conversion and bus isolation,
by replacing the amplifier component with either a media conversion circuit or an
optoisolator, respectively. For bus controller debug purposes, the lines in between
the amplifiers can be monitored to help identify malfunctioning bus controllers.
Figure 7 shows bilateral arbitration being applied to an I2C-to-GPIO connection.

Figure 7 I2C to GPIO connection

Conclusions

There are several reasons to split a bidirectional bus into transmit/receive pairs.
From increased performance to enabling debug to isolation, splitting of the bus is
a technique that many designers will find useful at one time or another.

Bilateral arbitration is a bus arbitration technique that enables most bus

splitting applications. It relies on the behavior of bidirectional bus
communication to eliminate the need for external control circuitry, and is generic
enough to be used for many applications without adding unneeded complexity.

References

NXP Semiconductor, �I2C Bus Specification and User Manual�

Blom, E., �Optically isolating an I2C interface: Beware of nonlinear propagation
delays�, EDN, April 2012
Thoren, M., �Method provides fast, glitch-free isolation of I2C and SMBus signals�,
EDN, June 2004

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fcasanellas

In fig. 1, if IOA is low, Q1 is on, Q2 is on at it seems that the circuit remains

in a latched state: if now IOA is released, it stays low forewer by Q2.

Mar 25, 2016 1:43 AM EST

0 | 0Reply
jeaander

Yes, that is true. That is exactly the latchup condition I described in the paper.
If you use the circuit from figure 5 you can add isolation circuitry and avoid the
latchup.

Mar 25, 2016 3:37 PM EDT

0 | 0Reply
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