NXP Semiconductors
UM10301
User Manual for PCF85x3, PCF85x63, PCA8565, PCF2123, and
PCA21125
UM10301
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© NXP Semiconductors N.V. 2015. All rights reserved.
User manual
Rev. 2.1 — 23 July 2015
15 of 54
6.1 Oscillation allowance
Fig 4 shows the Pierce oscillator schematic with the external crystal. For an oscillation to
take place the real component of the oscillator impedance has to be larger than the
motional resistance R
1
(sometimes called R
S
or ESR). If R
1
is too large no oscillation will
take place since no operating point can be reached.
Similarly, if the supply voltage is too low or the temperature is too low, no oscillation can
build up.
A method to test how much margin the design has is to include a resistor R
X
in series
with the crystal. The value of the resistor is changed (a trimmer is useful here) to see at
which values of R
X
oscillation starts and stops. Starting from a large value of R
X
the
resistance is lowered until oscillation starts. This value of R
X
is called R
X-start
. Now the
value is increased again until oscillation stops, R
X
is called R
X-stop
.
The oscillation allowance OA is defined as:
OA = R
X-start
+ R
1
As a rule of thumb, the motional resistance of the crystal chosen should be
5
1
OA
R
≤
This test can be done in the lab under room temperature. This should give enough safety
margins to allow for production spread of IC and crystal and to deal with the increasing
value of R
1
under influence of increased temperature.
6.2 Using an external oscillator
It is possible to supply a clock signal from an external oscillator instead of using the
internal oscillator if for some reason it is desired to not use the internal oscillator. In this
case no crystal will be connected to the OSCI and OSCO pins. Instead, the external
oscillator is connected to the OSCI pin while the OSCO pin must be left floating. The
external oscillator should provide a signal with about 500 mV amplitude, swinging around
a +250 mV bias (i.e. never going negative) as would be seen if the crystal was being
used. These are general guidelines and some real time clocks require different input as
discussed below. Additionally, values mentioned here are for guideline only and for every
application correct operation must be verified.
6.2.1 RTC family PCF85x63, PCF8563, PCF8564A, PCA8565, PCF8523
A good starting point is to supply a signal with amplitude between 500 mV and 1000 mV,
with the bias such that the signal doesn’t go negative and operates in the same region as
would have been the case with a crystal.
Suppose that amplitude of the external CLK is 5 V (from 0 V to 5 V). Using 1 M and 100 k
resistors the signal could be reduced to (100 / 1100) x 5 V = 450 mV. This is better in line
with the signals that the internal circuitry handles when an external crystal is used as is
the case in the standard application. This reduced signal can then be applied to the OSCI