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[FAQ] What is fail-safe biasing, and how do you design for it?

What is fail-safe biasing, and how do you design for it?

  • In order to comply with RS-485 standards, the receiver output must generate a logic level high  when the differential input (VID) is more than 200mV, and must output a logic level low when VID is less than -200mV. However, you can generate an invalid output under three scenarios:

    • Open bus conditions, such as a broken cable or a disconnected connector.
    • Shorted bus conditions, such as a cable insulation breakdown shorting the twisted pair.
    • Idle bus conditions that occur when no driver on the bus is actively driving.

    In any of these scenarios, for a terminated transmission line, the RS-485 receiver VID would be zero and a non-fail-safe receiver output would be indeterminate.

    Fail-safe biasing provides a differential voltage to the idle bus in order to maintain the receiver at a logic high level. If you don’t take fail-safe biasing into account, the termination resistors can lower the bus voltage to 0V, leading to an incorrect output or signal oscillation. You can design fail-safe biasing by using a resistor network along with an RS-485 transceiver. TI’s isolated RS-485 transceivers all have integrated fail-safe basing ]  for open, short or idle bus situations, eliminating the need for external circuitry to achieve this functionality.