An RS-485 transceiver consists of a differential driver and a differential receiver. For standard compliant drivers, the RS-485 standard specifies a minimum differential output voltage (V_OD) of ±1.5 V, and for standard compliant receivers a minimum differential input voltage (V_ID) of ±200 mV. The large difference between driver output voltage and receiver input voltage gives RS-485 networks high noise immunity, which is one of the reasons why they are deployed in electrical noisy environments. The typical output voltage of Renesas’ transceivers is ±3.1 V, and thus, twice the 1.5 V required by the standard. Their minimum receiver input voltage range is also reduced and reaches from -50 mV to -200 mV. This increased input sensitivity enables receivers to detect bus voltages of 0 V, which occurs during normal operation when the bus is not actively driven, or during a fault condition when the two bus conductors are shorted. The increase of driver output signal and receiver input sensitivity allows for connecting up to 512 transceivers to the same bus. This is twice the amount possible with standard transceivers and contributes to a drastic cost reduction during network design.