First current-sense amplifier to integrate a high-precision low-drift shunt resistor

Introduced as the industry’s first current-sense amplifier to integrate a high-precision, low-drift shunt resistor, the Texas Instruments (TI) INA250 can deliver highly-accurate measurements over a wide temperature range. The INA250 integrates the shunt resistor with a bi-directional, zero-drift current-sense amplifier to support both low-side and high-side implementations. Its accuracy and low drift reduce or may eliminate designers' calibration effort for many systems. This integration also enables lower system cost and a smaller board footprint compared to competitive solutions. By enabling high-accuracy measurement along with low system cost and a small board footprint, the INA250 current-sense amplifier delivers higher performance to applications such as test and measurement, communications load monitoring, and power supplies. Test and measurement designers can achieve required performance levels and potentially eliminate calibration while reducing cost up to 76 percent. High-performance enterprise and telecom equipment designers can achieve distributed measurement to maximize system efficiency and enhance system management. The INA250 evaluation module (EVM) enables designers to quickly and easily evaluate the device’s accuracy. Also, the INA250 TINA-TI and TINA-TI Spice models are available for download.