Verdin Carrier Board Design Guide
Preliminary
– Subject to Change
Toradex AG l Ebenaustrasse 10 l 6048 Horw l Switzerland l +41 41 500 48 00 l
l
Page | 84
on the module. Therefore, the pull-up resistors need to be disabled (or its power rail be turned off)
while the SD_1_PWR_EN turns off the card rail. Otherwise, the module can back feed to the card.
The signal states of the external devices like the RS232 signals of the host PC or the display's HDMI
signals are hard to control by the Verdin module and the carrier board. Therefore, it might be
required to take other countermeasures for preventing the backfeeding of these interfaces.
3.5.4.2
Prototype Testing
For identifying backfeeding on a system with a Verdin module, it is recommended to measure the
IO rails of the different power domains in different scenarios. Different scenarios mean testing
different power states of the systems with different types of peripheral devices plugged in and
turned on. If you can measure any significant residual voltage on an IO rail, further investigations
are required for identifying the source of the backfeeding.
The first option is to unplug external peripherals and observe the residual voltage. If the voltage
drops, the peripheral signals are likely a source of backfeeding. If you measure residual voltage in
one power domain, all the input signals crossing this domain should be checked. Measure the
voltage levels on these inputs. A pin that is the source for backfeeding has a higher voltage than
the residual voltage on its IO rail. Typically, due to the protection diode in the backfeeding path,
the voltage at the input pin is around 200mV to 300mV higher than the residual voltage (see
Figure 70: Measuring backfeeding current
If a signal features a series resistor, the voltage drop can be used to measure the backfeeding
current. Some signals might not have a series resistor for measuring the current. By adding a load
resistor to the backfeeding signal (for example, a 100
Ω
resistor), the voltage with and without extra
load can be measured. This allows to estimate the internal resistance of the driver by using the
following formula:
𝑅
𝑖
≈
(𝑉
𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑
− 𝑉
𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑
) ∙ 𝑅
𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑
𝑉
𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑
With the help of the estimated internal driver resistance, the backfeeding current on the pin can be
estimated by using the following formula (V
peripheral IO rail
is the peripheral rail voltage, V
backfeeding
is the
voltage on the signal without the extra load resistor):
𝐼
𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔
≈
(𝑉
𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝐼𝑂 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑙
− 𝑉
𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔
)
𝑅
𝑖
Peripheral
SoC
IO Rail (off)
RX
Peripheral Rail (on)
TX
22R
1V
1.8V
1.6V
1.3V
High
0.3V
I = 0.3V/22R = 13.6mA