Rainbow LED driver is a flashy performer

A Rohm Semiconductor product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team May 7, 2004

New from Rohm is the first integrated LED driver to combine the ability to drive red, green, blue and white LED outputs with a mode that provides high brightness "flash" LED output.

New from Rohm is the first integrated LED driver to combine the ability to drive red, green, blue and white LED outputs with a mode that provides high brightness "flash" LED output.

Rohm's BH6048KN rainbow LED driver is a single-chip solution for managing multiple LEDs in mobile phone applications.

In addition, the built-in flash mode allows designers to use LEDs to provide flash illumination for pictures taken with the mobile phone camera.

The new BH6048KN IC incorporates a high-efficiency, high current output PWM DC/DC convertor and a three-channel current driver that supports red, green, blue, and white LEDs.

Current settings for LED illumination functions can be configured to between 1.25 and 23.0mA in increments of approximately 1.4mA.

For flash driver output, current settings can be set between 75 and 150mA in 25mA steps.

Typical supply voltage for the new device is specified as 3.0-4.5V.

A two-wire serial I2C interface supports fast mode and facilitates connection to a host controller.

Supplied in a compact QFN 28-pin package, the BH6048KN has dimensions of just 5.2 x 5.2 x 0.8mm.

For applications where saving board space is the overriding design criteria, a BGA version of the device (known as the BH6048GU) with a footprint of only 3.0mm2 requires only 30% of the board space of the 28-pin QFN BH6048KN.