SLVSLJ5 March 2026 TCA9846
ADVANCE INFORMATION
Applications of the TCA9846 contain an I2C (or SMBus) controller device and up to eight I2C target devices. The downstream channels are used to resolve I2C target address conflicts. For example, if eight identical digital temperature sensors are needed in the application, one sensor can be connected at each channel: 0-7. When the temperature at a specific location is read, the appropriate channel can be enabled and all other channels switched off, the data can be retrieved, and the I2C controller can move on and read the next channel.
In an application where the I2C bus contains many additional target devices that do not result in I2C target address conflicts, these target devices can be connected to any desired channel to distribute the total bus capacitance across multiple channels. If multiple switches are enabled simultaneously, additional design requirements must be considered (see the Design Requirements section and Detailed Design Procedure section).