The RS-232 standard is one of the most popular serial communications standards for industrial, instrumentation and medical applications. It is used for data transfer, system automation, process control and point to point communications between computers. These interconnected systems are often separated by long distances, so galvanic isolation is required to break up ground loops and to protect against high-voltage transients. As shown in this figure, the ADM3251E uses integrated chip-scale transformers to isolate both the power and signal lines making it well suited for these applications.