Android sensor hub software extends smartphone battery lifetimes
Ready-to-deploy, the Android M Sensor Hub Solution, has a software library for sensors used in devices running the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS.
The library is intended to leverage Bosch Sensortec’s sensor hubs, motion and environmental sensors. The hub supports full sensor data fusion with three-, six- or nine-axis sensors and can accommodate a variety of integrated solutions combining the company’s sensor hubs with individual sensors, i.e. BMA4-series, BHA250, BMM150, BMG250, BMI160, BMX160 and BME680. The library complies with the Android M Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) 6.0.
In power-saving mode, it is claimed to significantly reduce power demand down to 0.1mW. In full operating mode, with all of its 29 motion sensors, seven environmental sensors, Android M-specified virtual sensors, always-on, wake up and non-wake up features running, the power consumption still remains low at approximately 10mW.
To reduce smartphone time-to-market cycle times and to support architectures with various power requirements, the integrated software library provides all Android functions: significant motion, step counter, step detector, tilt detector, linear acceleration, gravity detection, geomagnetic rotation, game rotation vector, rotation vector, heading with magnetic calibration, batching, activity recognition, gestures, hi-fi and pedestrian dead reckoning.
The new library delivers improved performance in fundamental virtual sensor features such as step detection and counting, and offers full firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) update functionality (in collaboration with OEMs’ FOTA service).
