A device for bus-networked operation of an electronic unit having microcontroller has a semiconductor circuit which is supplied from a superordinate potential, and is connected between a bus protocol module of the microcontroller and the cores of a two core bus. The semiconductor circuit, which has at least two operating modes, "transmission and reception" (NORMAL) and "sleep" (SLEEP), compromises: a receiving circuit connected to the two bus cores, whose output communicates with a reception input of the bus protocol; a transmitting circuit coupled to receive the transmission output of the bus protocol function; a wake-up identification circuit connected to the cores of the two core bus, and having a wake-up input and switching means for providing, at a control output, a switch-on signal after identification of a wake-up signal from the wake-up input or from the bus, and for emitting a switch-off signal in the SLEEP mode. A voltage regulator, supplied from superordinate potential, provides a regulated output voltage to the microcontroller and to the bus protocol module. The voltage regulator has a control input which communicates with the control output of the semiconductor circuit, and is configured to switch on in the presence of the switch-on signal and to switch off in the presence of the switch-off signal,