AFE simplifies complex programming algorithms, extends life of industrial equipment

Analog Devices, Inc. introduced a highly integrated polyphase analog front end (AFE) with power quality analysis designed to help extend the health and life of industrial equipment while saving developers significant time and cost over custom solutions. Achieving extremely accurate, high-performance power quality monitoring typically requires customized development, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

The ADE9000 AFE is an off-the-shelf solution with embedded power quality algorithms and integrated with high-performance analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in one single device. This integration simplifies additional complex algorithm programming, reduces cost and component count, and increases speed to market while still achieving high accuracy and enabling EN61000-4-30 Class S for power quality.

Equipment in factories, hospitals, commercial buildings, and other settings is often susceptible to service interruption, premature failure, and long-term damage caused by disturbances and variations in the power supply, known as pollution. In many cases, this pollution in the power supply can go undetected before damaging expensive equipment. The ADE9000 AFE enables designers of power quality monitoring solutions to measure and analyze pollution in order to prevent these disruptions and long-term damage, primarily for three-phase power meters.

The ADE9000 AFE integrates seven high-performance ADCs, a high-end reference, a flexible digital signal processing (DSP) core, and proprietary algorithms into a single convenient device. High accuracy is driven by the ADCs and reference which provide low drift over temperature and the highest accuracy over the widest dynamic range.

Pre-programmed proprietary power quality software provide real-time monitoring and harmonic analysis, including magnitude and phase information. This enables timely and cost-saving corrective action when necessary. For power system meter designers who do not require the advanced power quality features of the ADE9000, the ADE9078 energy metering AFE is available for polyphase utility grade meter applications.