Automotive Audio Bus (A2B®) Development Tools

Analog Devices Automotive Audio Bus (A2B®) System consists of a single master and at least one slave, where the transceiver at the host controller is the master. The master transceiver generates clock, synchronization, and framing for all slave nodes and is programmable over a control bus (I²C) for configuration and readback. An extension of this control bus is embedded in the A2B data stream, which enables the host to directly access slave transceiver registers and any I²C-connected peripherals on slave nodes. Transceivers can connect directly to PDM microphones and numerous peripherals via I²C and a multichannel I²S/TDM interface. The transceiver also supports an A2B bus powering feature, where the master node supplies voltage and current to the slave nodes over the same daisy-chained, twisted-pair wire cable used for the communication link. This eliminates the need for a power supply on bus-powered slave nodes. Due to the numerous configurations that are possible for a given A2B system, several evaluation platforms can be used in combination to verify system operation.