Introduction

The Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit (I3C®) is a two-wire serial bus interface developed by the MIPI® Alliance to improve sensor and device integration to an application processor. It builds over the traditional Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C) interface and overcomes the concerns historically encountered while using I²C, Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), and Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART) protocols in an application. The devices on an I3C bus communicate in a Controller/Target environment where either the Controller or the Target device can initiate the communication. Refer to the MIPI® Alliance website for more information on I3C specifications.

Many industries like computing, telecommunication and automotive are gradually transitioning from the traditional I²C /SPI/UART communication interfaces to a fast and simplified MIPI I3C protocol. As many sensor devices still communicate over traditional protocols, it is also required to maintain backward compatibility. When there are different communication interfaces in a system design, a multi-protocol translator or an I3C-to-serial converter is beneficial to connect the I²C /SPI/UART devices to a host device with an I3C bus. The 8-bit PIC^® microcontroller with an I3C Target module acts as a bridge between the I3C Controller and the I²C/SPI/UART devices.

This application note describes the implementation of a multi-protocol translator using an 8-bit PIC microcontroller with I3C Target capability. An application example implemented with this multi-protocol translator is available on MPLAB^® Discover at the link below.