The NCA9306 is a 2 channel bidirectional I²C and SMBus multi-voltage level translator with an enable (EN) pin input. It allows voltage translation between 0.95 V and 5 V without the use of a direction pin. It supports up to 100 MHz up translation and >100 MHz down translation at ≤ 30 pF capacitive load. There is no need for a direction pin which minimizes the system effort. The NCA9306 supports 5 V tolerant I/O pins to support mixed mode signal operation. The ability to set up different voltage translation levels on each channel makes the device very flexible and suitable for a lot of different applications.

The low ON-state resistance R_ON of the switch allows connections to be made with minimal propagation delay. When EN is HIGH, the translator switch is on, and the SCLA and SDAA I/O are connected to the SCLB and SDAB I/O respectively, allowing bidirectional data flow between ports. When EN is LOW, the translator switch is off, and a high-impedance state exists between ports. As with the standard I²C bus-system, pull-up resistors are required to provide the logic HIGH levels on the translators bus. The NCA9306 has a standard open-drain configuration of the I²C-bus. The size of these pull-up resistors depend on the system. Each side of the translator must have a pull-up resistors. NCA9306 is designed to work with Standard-mode, Fast-mode and Fast-mode plus I²C bus devices in addition to the SMBus devices.

When the SDAA or SDAB pin is LOW, the clamp is in the ON-state and a low resistance connections exists between the SDAA and SDAB ports. Assuming the higher voltage is on the SDAB port when the SDAB port is HIGH, the voltage on the SDAA port is limited to the voltage set by refA. When the SDAA port is HIGH, the SDAB port is pulled to the refB supply voltage by the pull-up resistors. The SCLA or SCLB pins also follows the same behavior as described for SDAA or SDAB pins.