company blog about Supplying Texas Instruments Current-Sensing Amplifier Chips: Enabling Precise Power Management and Extended Flight Time for Drones

As drone technology becomes increasingly widespread in fields such as agricultural pest control, logistics and delivery, security patrols, and military reconnaissance, drone electronic speed control (ESC) systems and power management units (PMUs) place stringent demands on the accuracy and real-time performance of current sensing. As a professional supplier of electronic components, Shenzhen Mingjiada Electronics Co., Ltd. has long provided a stable supply of the full range of current sense amplifier chips from Texas Instruments (TI), offering core sensing support for efficient drone flight and system safety.

Why Is High-Precision Current Sensing Essential for UAV Applications?

In UAV power systems, current sense amplifiers serve as the bridge between digital control and analog power. Their core value lies in:

Accurate Estimation of Battery Life (Battery Level Monitoring): By sampling current from the high-side or low-side, these amplifiers perform real-time integration to calculate battery charge and discharge levels, preventing UAV crashes or forced landings caused by inaccurate battery level estimates.

Optimizing FOC Vector Control (Motor Drive): Field-Oriented Control (FOC) of a drone’s brushless DC (BLDC) motors requires precise three-phase current feedback. TI’s current sense amplifiers, with their enhanced PWM rejection ratio, deliver stable output even under high common-mode voltage transients, ensuring smooth motor operation.

Overcurrent Protection and System Safety: These amplifiers respond rapidly to overload or stalled-rotor currents, triggering hardware-level alarms to protect expensive flight control boards and battery packs.

Mingjiada Electronics Supplies Texas Instruments’ Core Series of Current Sense Amplifiers

Leveraging supply chain strengths honed over more than 20 years in the industry, Mingjiada Electronics provides genuine, in-stock TI current sense amplifiers to a wide range of drone and industrial customers, with a focus on the following popular series and models:

1. INA240 Series — The Ideal Choice for Motor Drivers

This series is a star product in drone ESC design. It supports a wide common-mode input range of -4V to 80V and features enhanced PWM rejection, enabling precise measurement of small signals amid high-speed switching noise. It is particularly well-suited for high-side current monitoring of high-voltage battery packs (such as 6S–12S lithium batteries).

2. INA241 Series — Ultra-Precise Bidirectional Monitoring

For flight control systems requiring an ultra-high dynamic range, Mingjiada supplies models such as the INA241A1, A2, A3, and A4. This series offers selectable gain (20 V/V to 200 V/V), features an extremely low input offset voltage of 10 µV, and supports common-mode voltages from -4 V to 110 V, making it suitable for drone fast-charging and energy recovery systems requiring bidirectional current detection.

3. INA290/INA293 Series — Cost-Effective Wide Voltage Range

For consumer-grade or small-to-medium-sized drones, TI’s INA290 and INA293 offer exceptional value for money. Supporting a wide input voltage range of 2.7V to 120V and featuring extremely low gain error, they are an excellent choice for battery management systems (BMS).

4. INA180 / INA199 Series — Compact and Low-Power

Ideal for compact drone motherboards with limited space. The INA180 (26V common-mode) and INA199 (zero-drift, 26V common-mode) are available in small packages such as the SC70-6 and feature extremely low power consumption (~100 µA), making them well-suited for battery-powered portable devices.

Mingjiada Electronics: Your Local TI Analog Device Expert

As a globally renowned electronic component supplier with over 20 years of industry experience, Mingjiada Electronics not only offers a full range of current sense amplifier chips (including industrial-grade and automotive-grade AEC-Q100-certified models) but also provides corresponding original manufacturer evaluation boards (EVMs), such as the INA281EVM, INA293EVM, and INA296AEVM, to help engineers accelerate their R&D and testing processes.

We have ample stock and a comprehensive selection of models—feel free to contact us!