The CAN bus was original conceived as a data communication standard for use in vehicles and has increasingly been adopted as a general purpose field bus for industrial control. Either way you can expect CAN bus signals to be passing through electrically noisy and harsh environments. To ensure maximum system reliability the physical layer, i.e. the bus drivers and receivers need to be particularly robust. The LTC2875 from Linear Technology is a high-voltage-tolerant CAN transceiver chip. Protection features are built-in so there is no need for additional external devices.

Key features of the LTC2875:

  • ±60 V overvoltage line fault protection.
  • 3.3 or 5 V operation.
  • 4 Mbps operation.
  • ±25 kV ESD protection on interface pins (±8 kV on other pins)
  • Variable slew rate driver with active symmetry control and SPLIT pin for low electromagnetic emission.
  • Extended Common Mode Range (±36 V)
  • Passive bus behaviour with power off.
  • Driver current limit and thermal shutdown.

The LTC2875 is available in commercial, industrial, automotive, and military temperature grades and comes in 3×3-mm DFN-8 or SO-8 package with industry-standard pinouts. Prices begin at $1.72 per unit in quantities of 1000 units.