Application Note AN-1052

Using the IR217x Linear Current Sensing ICs

By Jonathan Adams

1. Basic Functionality.......................................................................... 1
2. Bootstrap Circuit ............................................................................. 1
3. Retrieving Analog Current Signal at the Output ............................. 2
3.1 Passive Filters .............................................................................. 2
3.2 Active Filters ................................................................................. 3
4. Interfacing the Output With Digital Circuits..................................... 3
4.1 Hardware Interfacing .................................................................... 3
4.2 Software for Decoding the PWM Signal ....................................... 4
5. Dealing With Negative Transients at the VS Pin ............................ 4
6. Layout Recommendations.............................................................. 4
7. Dv/Dt And Its Effect On Duty Cycle ................................................ 5
8. Comparison of the IR2170/1/2/5..................................................... 6
Linear current sensing ICs are designed to transfer current sense information from the high-side
motor drive circuit to the low-side circuit, so that the information may be processed by ground
referenced control circuits. The Analog input signal is actually a voltage which comes from the
voltage drop across an external sensing resistor.

APPLICATION NOTE

AN-1052

International Rectifier 233 Kansas Street El Segundo CA 90245 USA

Using the IR217x Linear Current Sensing ICs

By Jonathan Adams
Topics Covered:
Basic Functionality
Bootstrap Circuit
Retrieving Analog Current Signal at the Output
Interfacing the Output With Digital Circuits
Dealing With Negative Transients at the Vs Pin
Layout Recommendations
dV/dt and its effect on Duty Cycle
Comparison of IR2170/1/2/5

1. BASIC FUNCTIONALITY
This section will cover the basic operation of the current
sense IC.
These Linear Current Sensing ICs are designed to transfer
current sense information from the high side part of a Motor
drive circuit to the low side circuit, so that the information
may be processed by the ground referenced control circuits.
The Analog input signal is actually a voltage which comes
from the voltage drop across an external sensing resistor. The
sensing resistor senses the motor phase current, and generates
a small AC voltage signal input to the IR2175 Current sensing
IC. The maximum input signal is +260mV so the sense resistor should be chosen such that the desired setting for
overcurrent would generate 260mV across it (e.g. for a 10A
overcurrent the sense resistor would be 26m ).
The AC input signal is converted to a PWM signal, in the
high side circuitry of the IR2175, using a carrier frequency of
130kHz . The PWM signal is then level shifted down to the
low side ground referenced circuit.
The PO output is an open drain PWM output, which means it
can be easily interfaced with any control circuit with operating voltages of 3.3V to 15V. Due to the fact that the output is
an open drain output, the PO pin will need to be connected to
the low side control circuit power supply by means of a pullup resistor (the size of this pull-up resistor is dependant on
the input current requirement of the circuit that the PO output is being interfaced with, but typically 1-10K would be a
good value for this resistor.

There are two options for handling the output signal from the
current sense IC:
1. Use a filter to filter out the carrier frequency and
retrieve the analog current signal.
2. Directly interface the output with the low side digital
control circuit (e.g. microcontroller or DSP) and use
a software algorithm to calculate the current
Methods and circuits will be discussed later in sections 3 & 4.
The high side floating supply between Vb and Vs is generated
by means of a bootstrap circuit, which is described in the
next section. The circuit will operate down to a minimum
Vbs supply of 8V, but it is recommended that the Vbs and

Vdc
Dbs

Vcc

V+
Q1
V-

Current Vb
Sense
IC
Vs

Cbs
Rsense

COM

To Motor
Phase
Q2

Figure 1 Typical Connection Diagram

Vcc voltage are kept above 10V.

2. BOOTSTRAP CIRCUIT
The Vbs supply voltage is a floating supply that sits on top of
the Vs voltage (which in most cases will be a high frequency
square wave). There are a number of ways in which the Vbs
floating supply can be generated, one of these being the bootstrap method described here in this design tip. This method
has the advantage of being simple and inexpensive but has

2 Pole RC Filter AC Linearity @ 8kHz (IR2175)

2.5

3. RETRIEVING THE ANALOG CURRENT

SIGNAL AT THE OUTPUT

1.5
ideal
Vout

0.5

3.1 PASSIVE FILTERS

The simplest and lowest cost low pass filter is the basic RC
low pass filter. This type of filter does not have a sharp cutoff
the typical fall off is 6dB/octave, so the -3db point of the
circuit should be designed to be close to the fundamental frequency of the current signal, which in motor drives is commonly in the range of 8-10kHz. A better solution is to use a 2
pole RC filter as shown in fig 2. In the implementation used in
this example the first stage is designed to have a cutoff frequency of 7.2kHz which if we use the standard formula of:

218.00

204.00

190.00

Vin (mV)

Figure 3 AC Characteristics of 2 Stage RC Filter IR2175

If we characterize the IR2175 again with an RC filter, but this
time with a 16kHz input signal (some motor drive systems
are moving to using this as the PWM switching frequency),
and with R1 in fig 2 changed to 4.7k to change the cutoff
frequency point to be in the order of 15.5kHz, we get the
charcteristic shown in figure 4.
2 Pole RC Filter AC Linearity @ 16kHz (IR2175)
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
Vout(V)

The simplest method of retrieving the analog current sense

signal is to use a low pass filter to filter out the PWM carrier
frequency. Obviously there are many types of low pass filters
which can be used, both passive and active. Here we will concentrate on simplicity and low cost so we will look at two
alternatives, a passive RC filter and a single stage active filter.

176.00

8.00

0
162.00

some limitations, duty cycle and on-time are limited by the

requirement to refresh the charge in the bootstrap capacitor
(long on-times and high duty cycles require a charge pump
circuit - see application note an978 for information) . The
bootstrap supply is formed by a diode and capacitor combination as shown in Figure 1).
The operation of the circuit is as follows. When Vs is pulled
down to ground (either through the low side FET or the load,
depending on the circuit configuration), the bootstrap capacitor (Cbs) charges through the bootstrap diode (Dbs) from the
15V Vcc supply. Thus providing a supply to Vbs. When Vs is
pulled to a higher voltage by the high side switch the Vbs
supply will float and the bootstrap diode will be reverse bias
and block the rail voltage from the supply.

A typical situation and the one used here for example would
be an 8kHz AC input signal, using the AC input signal and
measuring the AC output from the filter, using a 150nF
decoupling capacitor. Fig 3 shows the AC linearity characteristics of the IR2175 which has a PWM frequency of 130kHz.
This results in the characteristic following the ideal with a
linearity of better than 1% down to 25mV, at which point the
difference is 3% from the ideal.

148.00

Figure 2 Two Stage RC Filter circuit

134.00

COM

Using the above filter on the PO output of an IR2175, we can

check the linearity, for both a DC current input and an 8kHz
AC current input. The typical use in an application circuit
would involve the IC sensing an AC current so the AC linearity
is a more important measure, and this is what we will focus on.

120.00

Analog
Current
Sense
Output

92.00

C2
470pF

106.00

C1
2.2nF

78.00

IR217x

64.00

18k

50.00

10k

36.00

R2

22.00

R1
PO

frequency, but to have little effect on the 8-10kHz carrier

frequency, so R2=18k, and C2=470pF,this gives a cutoff frequency of 19kHz for the second stage. It is always a good idea
to make sure the resistance of the second stage is higher than
that of the first stage to minimize the loading on the first
stage.

Vout(V)

Vcc

1.2
ideal

Vout

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
218.00

204.00

190.00

176.00

162.00

148.00

134.00

120.00

106.00

92.00

78.00

64.00

50.00

36.00

8.00

0
22.00

1
fc =
2RC

Vin (mV)

makes R1 = 10k, and C1=2.2nF. For the second stage we use

a higher cutoff frequency to further attenuate the switching

Figure 4 AC Characteristics of 2 Stage RC Filter IR2175

Again we get a linearity against the ideal of better than 1%,

down to the minimum input resolution at 8mV, at which
point we veer away from the ideal.

1.5nF

Vcc
12k

PO

2 Pole RC Filter AC Linearity (IR2172)

12k
+
L
-

2.2

1.5nF

1.8
1.6
Vout(V)

Analog
Current
Sense
Output

1k

IR217x

18k

1.4

COM

ideal

1.2

Vout

1
0.8
0.6
0.4

Figure 6 Two Pole VCVS Active Filter

196.00

182.00

168.00

154.00

140.00

126.00

98.00

112.00

84.00

70.00

56.00

42.00

28.00

0.00

14.00

0.2

Vin (mV)

that the performance is much improved over the passive

filter, with a linearity better than 1% down to a 50mV input
and about 9% at 25mV.

Figure 5 AC Characteristics of 2 Stage RC Filter IR2172

2 Pole Active Filter AC Linearity (Gain=19) (IR2172)
3
2.5

Vout(V)

2
ideal

1.5

Vout

1
0.5

190.00

176.00

162.00

148.00

134.00

120.00

92.00

106.00

78.00

64.00

50.00

36.00

22.00

0
8.00

For comparison we will look at the AC linearity characteristics of the IR2172 with an 8kHz AC input signal. This IC has
a PWM carrier frequency of 40kHz, so we will use the same
filter circuit as used for the the tests of figure 3. The results
can be seen in Figure 5. The measured characteristic follows
the ideal line closely down to about 50mV with a linearity of
approximately 2%, but below 50mV it starts to veer away
sharply with a 14% difference from the expected ideal at
25mV input. The lower PWM carrier frequency results in
lower resolution which leads to the lower performance in
terms of linearity, particularly at low level input signals.

Vin (mV)

Active filters commonly have sharper cutoff points than do

passive filters so we will see how they perform in the next
section.

Figure 7 AC Characteristics of 2 Pole VCVS Active Filter

NOTE: Using passive LC filters is not recommended due to

the loading on the PO pin.

The filter could be futher improved, by adding another

stage, but performance cost issues will dictate whether that
is necessary.

3.2 ACTIVE FILTERS

4. INTERFACING THE OUTPUT WITH DIGITAL

CIRCUITS

Active filters typically have sharper cutoff characteristics

than passive filters, and flatter passbands, so in a case where
the desired pass frequency is 8kHz and the frequency to filter
out is 40kHz an active filter would have a more desirable
characteristic. In this example we are using the IR2172, but
the circuit could also be easily be used with the IR2175.
For the application example used here a single stage 2 pole
VCVS (voltage controlled voltage source) filter has been implemented. The circuit can be seen in figure 6. This implementation is basically a butterworth filter, with a gain of 19. We are
using a higher gain than would normally be used for this type
of filter, as the cutoff frequency is set to 9kHz which is very
close to the actual desired output frequency.
Figure 7 shows the AC linearity characteristics under the
same test conditions as for the RC filter, and it can be seen

Interfacing the IR2175 with digital control circuits such as

microcontrollers, or DSP processors is more simple in terms
of the hardware aspect, however the software algoritm will
involve more work. However it will limit any introduced error from the filtering circuits discussed in section 3. The
IR217x devices were primarily designed with this application
in mind.
4.1 HARDWARE INTERFACING
As the PO output of the IR2175, and the IR2171/2 have
open drain outputs, interfacing with the digital control circuit
will involve using a pull up resistor which is tied to the power
supply of the control circuit, which will likely be a
microcontroller or DSP device, with a Vdd of either 3.3V or

5V, so a connection would look something like the one shown

in Figure 8.
4.1 SOFTWARE FOR DECODING THE PWM SIGNAL
An example of using the linear current sensing IC with a DSP
can be found in Design Tip DT99-8, This provides the hardware and software solution for an IR2171/IR2172 with a TI
TMS320C240 DSP.

Notice that although the resistor between the Vs pin and the
ceneter of the half bridge is in the current sensing path ( i.e.
between V+ and V-, it will not contribute to the current sense
signal unless there is current flow in that resistor, and that will
only occur during a transition and would be short in duration
(hence being ignored by the amplifier at the input of the
IR2175 due to the limited Slew rate of this amplifier).

6. LAYOUT RECOMMENDATIONS
Vdd
R1
PO

IR217x

GP0

MCU

As with all power electronics care should be taken with the

circuit layout to minimize parasitic elements. Figure 9 below
shows a typical half bridge circuit and the stray inductances.
Each of these stray inductances can be minimized by making
the tracking on the circuit board as short and as wide as possible.
VCC

COM

LD1

Vss
VB

HO

Figure 8 Interface between IR217x and

Digital Controller

5. DEALING WITH NEGATIVE TRANSIENTS AT

THE VS PIN

VS

Q1

+
HV1

VCC
VCC

LO

ICs require their own separate

negative transient protection circuit, due to the fact that they are not
synchronized with the gate drivers

COM

Notice in the typical connection diagram that there is a diode

connected from com to Vs and a resistor between vs and the
center of the half bridge. The combination of these two components clamps the Vs pin, so that it can only fall one diode
drop below the com pin. The diode should be a fast recovery
diode with a recovery of better than 100ns, and a 1A diode
would be sufficient. The resistor between Vs pin and the center of the half bridge should be in the range of 10-20 Ohms.

CB
R1

LS1

IMPORTANT: The current sensing

The condition where the Vs pin goes negative with respect to

the com pin is more critical for the current sensing ICs due to
the fact that, unlike the gate drivers, the current sense IC will
be continuing to operate during the transition, where the high
side switch is turning off. For this reason it is very important
to ensure that the current sense IC does not see a negative
transient at the Vs pin. More details on the issue of negative
transients at the Vs pin can be found in Design Tip DT97-3.

LLOAD

RLOAD

LD2
C1

Q2

HV2

R2

LS2

Figure 9. A typical half-bridge circuit with stray inductances.

For the IR2175 current sense IC, the layout guidelines are
similar to those for gate drive ICs. As Shown in Figure 10 the
decoupling capacitors for the Vcc and Vbs supply should be as
close as possible to the IC. Also the connection between Vand Vs should be made very close to the IC, to minimize
Recommended

Not Recommended

VB

VB

VS

VS

VCC

VCC

COM

COM

Figure 10. Decoupling Capacitor Layout.

the voltage difference between these pins. The connection

between the sensing resistor and the V+ pin should be as short
as possible to minimize noise pickup.
An example of a layout for the IR2175 can be seen in fig 11.
This is a layout for the typical connection diagram shown in
figure 1. Notice the short connections between the current
sensing resistor and the IR2175, this will help to minimize
noise coupling into the current sense signal. The high current
tracks are kept wide to minimize inductance. The negative
transient protection circuit formed by R2 and D2 is kept
close to the IC to have maximum effect, and notice that the
decoupling capacitors for Vcc and Vbs, are put as close to the
IC pins as is physically possible.

J it t e r
@100V (% )

J it t e r @200V (% )

J it t e r
@300V (% )

I R 2171/2
+ve dV/dt

1.4

2.8

4.0

I R 2171/2
-ve dV/dt

1. 5

3.3

5.0

I R 2175
+ve dV/dt

0.75

1.4

2.1

I R 2175
-ve dV/dt

0.25

0.8

1.6

Table 1 Typcal Duty Jitter(CMRR) for IR217x ICs

Figure 11. A typical IR2175S circuit layout

7. DV/DT AND ITS EFFECT ON DUTY CYCLE

This could also be described as the CMRR (Common Mode
Rejection Ratio) of the current sense ICs. In a situation wher
the high side is floating but not switching up and down (i.e. the
Vs pin voltage is fixed), then there would be no duty cycle
jitter.
However it is more likely that the IC would be used in a circuit
similar to that shown in the typical circuit diagram of figure 1
in which the Vs pin is connected to the center point of a halfbridge, an example would be using two current sensing ICs to
sense motor phase current in a thre phase half-bridge. In this
application then the Vs pin and therefore the high side circuitry
of the current sensing IC would switch between ground or near
ground and the positive DC bus, so in each transition there
would be a dV/dt, which the current sensing IC will have to
contend with. during the Vs pin transition the dV/dt will cause
some slight jitter in the output duty cycle at the PO pin. In
the case of the IR2175 this is 2% for a DC bus voltage of
300V. Table 1 below shows some typical duty jitter for the
IR2171/2 and IR2175 at various bus voltages for positive and
negative dV/dt. The results in the table are taken from system
testing on an IR Accelerator servo system.
In the example of a motor drive circuit this would translate to
a torque ripple at the motor and should be taken into account.

8. COMPARISON OF THE IR2170/1/2/5

The table 2 below provides a comparison of the functionality differences between the differnt current sensing ICs.

I R 2170

I R 2171

I R 2172

I R 2175

PWM Out

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ove r cur r e nt
Signa l

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

OC Tr ip De la y
( s )

1.5

1.5

1.5

2.0

I QBS (mA)

FO (k Hz)

N/A

40

40

130

Dmin (% )

N/A

Dma x (% )

N/A

93

93

91

Table 2 Comparison of IR217x Current Sensing ICs

IMPORTANT NOTE: It should be noted that the IR2171/IR2172 are being obsoleted, so for new designs the IR2175
should be used.

IR WORLD HEADQUARTERS: 233 Kansas St., El Segundo, California 90245 Tel: (310) 252-7105
Data and specifications subject to change without notice. 9/2/2003