MEMS barometric pressure sensors have lowest noise pressure, says TDK

Claimed to achieve the industry’s lowest pressure noise of 0.4 Pa RMS and attain the industry’s lowest power consumption of 1.3 microA, the InvenSense ICP-10125 is the latest addition to the SmartPressure family of TDK’s MEMS barometric pressure sensors.

The ICP-10125 also ensures temperature stability with a temperature coefficient of ±0.5 Pa per degrees C.

The ICP-10125 combines a barometric pressure and a temperature sensor in a small 3.55 x 3.55 x 1.45mm chimney package with waterproofing gel, providing IPX8 waterproofing to 10 ATM. The uniform machined lid and chimney with groove enable easier handling at production and assembly of customer products, says TDK. The ICP-10125 can be used in fitness, smart watch, and portable devices for fitness activity monitoring, location tracking for E911 calls, and indoor/outdoor navigation (dead-reckoning, floor/elevator/step detection).

The capacitive MEMS architecture delivers lower power consumption and lower noise than competing pressure sensors technologies, says TDK. It also has low noise and low power consumption, making the ICP-10125 suitable for wearable fitness monitoring and battery powered IoT. It can measure height change as small as 85mm, less than the height of a single stair step.

Operating temperature range is -40 to +85 degrees C.

“ICP-10125 delivers high accuracy, low power, temperature stability, and waterproofing in a small package footprint targeting the wearable market,” said Uday Mudoi, director of product marketing at InvenSense, a TDK company. “It enables determination of accurate location of E911 calls, tracks changes in elevation for activity monitoring, and extends battery life of always-on motion sensing applications.”

InvenSense ICP-10125 is available now for worldwide distribution. TDK also offers a development kit (DK-10125) and evaluation platform, as well as software to support customer development. The ICP-10125 joins the ICP-10101 and ICP-10111 pressure sensor products in the SmartPressure family.

InvenSense is a TDK Group company, providing MEMS sensors for consumer electronics and industrial areas with integrated motion and sound devices. Its portfolio combines MEMS sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses, and microphones with proprietary algorithms and firmware that intelligently process, synthesise, and calibrate the output of sensors, maximising performance and accuracy.

InvenSense’s motion tracking, audio and location platforms, and services can be found in mobile, wearables, smart home, industrial, automotive, and IoT products.

InvenSense is headquartered in San Jose, California and has offices worldwide.

https://invensense.tdk.com 

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Farnell builds IoT development framework with ON Semiconductor

To remove development obstacles and to accelerate IoT innovation, Farnell and ON Semiconductor have developed a development framework to simplify building IoT-enabled devices.

Farnell, an Avnet company, is now shipping a range of ON Semiconductor products to support the framework developed by the manufacturer and Avnet, to help OEMs more rapidly develop end-to-end IoT devices.

The IoTConnect framework simplifies the process of building IoT-enabled devices through rapid prototyping, says Farnell.

“Avnet, via Avnet Silica and EBV Elektronik in Europe, and ON Semiconductor are offering solutions to meet the changing needs of OEMs and their customers. By leveraging expertise across the Avnet organisation, and working closely with ON Semiconductor, we’re are to provide new ways to help OEMs stay competitive, maximize revenue potential, and design with the right technologies to create secure IoT solutions,” says Lou Lutostanski, vice president of IoT, Avnet.

The first supported product from ON Semiconductor is the RSL10 sensor development kit, suitable for applications such as industrial wearable devices, asset monitoring and smart sensing.  The development kit features what is claimed to be the industry’s lowest power flash-based Bluetooth Low Energy radio and an array of advanced environmental sensors, including an inertial sensor (three-axis accelerometer, three-axis gyroscope and a low power smart hub for motion sensing), a geomagnetic sensor and an ambient light sensor. The distributor offers the base version, the RSL10-SENSE-GEVK, and the RSL10-SENSE-DB-GEVK kit which has a debugger.

The ON Semiconductor range is available from Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and elememt14 in APAC.

ON Semiconductor supplies a portfolio of energy efficient, power management, analogue, sensors, logic, timing, connectivity, discrete, SoC and custom devices for customers in automotive, communications, computing, consumer, industrial, medical, aerospace and defence applications.

It has a network of manufacturing facilities, sales offices and design centres in key markets throughout North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific regions.

Farnell has over 80 years’ experience in the distribution of technology products and solutions for electronic system design, production, maintenance and repair. It uses this experience to support its broad customer base, from hobbyists to engineers, maintenance engineers and buyers, working with leading brands and start-ups to develop new products for market, and supporting the industry as it seeks to develop the current and next generation of engineers.

Farnell trades as Farnell in Europe, Newark in North America and element14 throughout Asia Pacific. It sells direct to consumers through a network of resellers and its CPC business in the UK.

Farnell is a business unit of Avnet, which has an extensive ecosystem that delivers design, product, marketing and supply chain expertise for customers at every stage of the product lifecycle.

http://www.farnell.com

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Bluetooth 5.0 for RE microcontroller uses SOTB for energy harvesting

The latest member of Renesas Electronics’ RE family of microcontroller is the RE01B, which has Bluetooth 5.0 support. The 32-bit low power microcontroller was developed using Renesas’ SOTB (Silicon on Thin Buried Oxide) process technology.

The Bluetooth-capable RE01B is suitable for energy harvesting systems and intelligent IoT devices that operate constantly at extremely low power levels without having to replace or recharge batteries. The RE01B microcontroller makes it easier to implement regular data management and firmware updates over Bluetooth while maintaining low power consumption, which extends the battery life.

The on-chip energy harvesting control circuit (rapid start up capacitor charging and secondary battery charge protection functionality) allows users to achieve battery-less Bluetooth communication. Energy harvesting and power storage can be directly connected to the RE01B.

The microcontroller is suitable for compact healthcare devices such as pulse oximeters and biomedical sensor patches, remote controls with voice recognition capabilities and smart meter modules. RE01B can also be used for IoT devices that require constant operation, period data collection and updates, such as devices for monitoring the elderly, children or assets in transit.

The RE01B is built around the Arm Cortex-M0+ core and Renesas’ proprietary SOTB process technology. It operates at a maximum operating frequency of 64MHz and achieves current consumption as low as 35 microA/MHz during operation and 600nA during standby; this is among the lowest in the industry for a Bluetooth-capable microcontroller, says Renesas. It can also be combined with Renesas’ ISL9123 ultra-low Iq DC/DC converter, configured as an external step-down regulator, to reduce current consumption during operation down to 15 microA/MHz to improve power efficiency.

It has 1.5Mbyte flash memory and 256Kbyte SRAM with Bluetooth functionality, suitable for over the air (OTA) firmware updating.

The RE01B is in a 64-pin QFN package measuring 8.0 x 8.0mm.

Security function include Trusted Secure IP and Renesas offers application programming interfaces (APIs) conforming to standard protocols, such as heart rate profile (HRP), environment sensing profile (ESP), and automation I/O profile (AIOP), in addition to Bluetooth 5.0 protocol stack.

Development tools for the RE family, include a QE for Bluetooth Low Energy, which generates programs for custom Bluetooth profiles that can then be integrated into the user’s own application programs, and a Bluetooth test tool suite, which provides a graphical user interface that allows users to perform initial wireless characteristics evaluations and Bluetooth functionality verification.

The RE01B is available now. The EB-RE01B evaluation kit from Tessera Technology is also available now.

http://www.renesas.com

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NuCurrent cuts loose by extending HF wireless charging

For product categories that are using RF and inductive charging, NuCurrent has launched NuEva (high frequency) HF development platform based on inductive resonant power transfer.

“There are a great number of product categories that aren’t well-served by RF and inductive charging,” said NuCurrent’s CEO, Jacob Babcock. “NuEva HF delivers power levels about 1,000 times higher than RF and it provides positioning flexibility about 100 times that of Qi,” he said. It can also charge multiple devices simultaneously.   

The NuEva HF platform operates at 6.78MHz, the same frequency as the standard developed by the AirFuel Alliance. In addition to multi-device charging from a single transmitter, greater spatial freedom and positioning flexibility, the HF method of power transfer delivers high system efficiencies and uniform charging zones and up to 300W power.

“NuEva HF represents a generational leap forward for inductive resonant power transfer,” said Babcock. It is intended for a range of applications, from gaming and robotics to personal transportation and medical devices, using wireless power.

NuEva HF offers several patented and proprietary technologies developed by NuCurrent. Among these innovations is face “repeater” technology which extends charging surface areas using inexpensive passive electronics driven from a single power source.

There is also multi-layer, multi-turn (MLMT) antennae that increase efficiencies and lower thermals and a variety of methods for cost-effective EMI mitigation, said NuCurrent.

The in-band communications reduce system cost, compared to Bluetooth, claims NuCurrent and there are is added flexibility for siting, with options for power transfer through a variety of materials (e.g. metal, tissue).

NuCurrent supplies developers with wireless power technologies and product integration expertise. Core technologies span magnetics, software and systems simulation. The company has generated over 150 patents granted and pending globally. It also offers internal tools to enhance speed to market, improve product performance and mitigate major development risks. The company says that its systems integration expertise supports manufacturers of appliances, smartphones, wearables, hearables, consumer electronics, medical devices, robotics, IoT, sporting equipment and other emerging product categories.

NuCurrent solutions are based on inductive and inductive resonant wireless power transfer which offers convenience, safety, efficiency, and enhanced user experience.

http://www.nucurrent.com

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