Whitepaper: Removing the barrier to USB Power Delivery for advanced USB-C applications

At first glance incredibly small, smart and user-friendly, USB type-C ports hide an incremental level of intelligence and complexity enabled by the USB Power Delivery standard. For instance, it introduces many application-specific functions, often optional, for dedicated features including battery-specific messages, firmware updates, extended message chunks, programmable power supplies, and more.

This whitepaper looks at the various advanced features offered by the USB Power Delivery standard and guides designers in selecting the right hardware and software environments for a given use case.

It then explains how developers can quickly build innovative and novel applications using our application-ready software libraries to simplify access to even the most advanced USB PD features and protocols based on real-life use cases.

Key advantages for developers:

• Thanks to our STUSB1602 USB Type-C controller and associated software libraries, USB PD support is available for most STM32 microcontrollers (so an ASSP is not required).
• Thanks to well packaged and designed software libraries, developers can find a ready-to-use project that is close enough to their end application, significantly reducing the development cycle.
• Thanks to a high level of abstraction, minimum knowledge about the standard itself is required.