Ready to wear sensor hubs

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Majeed Ahmad explores the latest sensor hub offerings for wearable devices.  

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By Majeed Ahmad

Atmel has beefed up its sensor hub offerings for wearable devices with SAM D20 Cortex M0+ microcontroller core to add more functionality and further lower the power bar for battery-operated devices. The SAM D20 MCUs offer ultra-low power through a patented power-saving technique called “Event System” that allows peripherals to communicate directly with each other without involving the CPU.

Atmel is part of the group of chipmakers that use low-power MCUs for sensor management as opposed to incorporating low-power core within the application processor. According to market research firm IHS Technology, Atmel is the leading sensor hub device supplier with 32 percent market share.

Sensor hubs are semiconductor devices that carry out sensor processing tasks — like sensor fusion and sensor calibration — through an array of software algorithms and subsequently transform sensor data into app-ready information for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. Sensor hubs combine inputs from multiple sensors and sensor types including motion sensors — such as accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes — and environmental sensors that provide light level, color, temperature, pressure, humidity, and many other inputs.

Atmel has supplied MCU-centric sensor hub solutions for a number of smartphones. Take China’s fourth largest smartphone maker, Coolpad, which has been using Atmel’s low-power MCU to offload sensor management tasks from handset’s main processor. However, while still busy in supplying sensor hub chips for smartphones and tablets, Atmel is looking at the next sensor-laden frontier: wearable devices.

SAM D20 Evaluation Kit

Wearable devices are becoming the epitome of always-on sensor systems as they mirror and enhance cool smartphone apps like location and transport, activity and gesture monitoring, and voice command operation in far more portable manner. At the same time, however, always-on sensor ecosystem within connected wearables requires sensor hubs to interpret and combine multiple types of sensing—motion, sound and face—to enable context, motion and gesture solutions for devices like smartwatch.

Sensor hubs within wearable environment should be able to manage robust context awareness, motion detection, and gesture recognition demands. Wearable application developers are going to write all kinds of apps such as tap-to-walk and optical gesture. And, for sensor hubs, that means a lot more processing work and a requirement for greater accuracy.

So, the low-power demand is crucial in wearable devices given that sensor hubs would have to process a lot more sensor data at a lot lower power budget compared to smartphones and tablets. That’s why Atmel is pushing the power envelope for connected wearables through SAM D20 Cortex M0+ cores that offload the application processor from sensor-related tasks.

LifeQ’s sensor module for connected wearables

The SAM D20 devices have two software-selectable sleep modes: idle and standby. In idle mode, the CPU is stopped while all other functions can be kept running. In standby mode, all clocks and functions are stopped except those selected to continue running.

Moreover, SAM D20 microcontroller supports SleepWalking, a feature that allows the peripheral to wake up from sleep based on predefined conditions. It allows the CPU to wake up only when needed — for instance, when a threshold is crossed or a result is ready.

The SAM D20 Cortex M0+ core offers the peripheral flexibility through a serial communication module (SERCOM) that is fully software-configurable to handle I²C, USART/UART and SPI communications. Furthermore, it offers memory densities ranging from 16KB to 256KB to give designers the option to determine how much memory they will require in sleep mode to achieve better power efficiency.

Atmel’s sensor hub solutions support Android and Windows operating systems as well as real-time operating system (RTOS) software. The San Jose–based chipmaker has also partnered with sensor fusion software and application providers including Hillcrest Labs and Sensor Platforms. In fact, Hillcrest is providing sensor hub software for China’s Coolpad, which is using Atmel’s low-power MCU for sensor data management.

The company has also signed partnership deals with major sensor manufacturers — including Bosch, Intersil, Kionix, Memsic and Sensirion — to streamline and accelerate design process for OEMs and ensure quick and seamless product integration.

Atmel Sensor Hub Software from Hillcrest Labs

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Majeed Ahmad is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on February 4, 2015.  Majeed Ahmad is author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future. Majeed has a background in Engineering MS, former EE Times Editor in Chief (Asia), Writer for EC Magazine, Author of SmartPhone, Nokia’s SMART Phone.

 

BSN* talks Atmel and ARM

This week, The Bright Side of News (BSN*) crew sat down with Atmel reps on the sidelines of ARM TechCon 2013 in Santa Clara to discuss two major announcements: the expansion of Atmel’s ARM Cortex-A5 MPU lineup and a series of new sensor hub partnerships.

“These two are clearly forward-thinking products that will hopefully put [Atmel] as front runners in newly expanding parts of the ARM universe,” writes BSN* Editor in Chief Anshel Sag. “Atmel first talked to us about their sensor hub and the introduction of the SAM D20 Cortex M0+ based design. Their MCU is designed in conjunction with a special development board in order to make it easier for companies to develop certain sensor fusion more easily. And because of the MCU’s low-power and design it can be integrated into tiny package sizes enabling sensors and sensor fusion within a single package.”

As Sag notes, this is because Atmel’s $600 development board is capable of enabling not only the connectivity of multiple sensors from various vendors, but also providing an easier software stack to make sensor fusion possible.

“After all, the truth is that sensor fusion will be the future of most mobile computing and it makes sense that someone would need to make it easier to combine different sensors together,” Sag continues. “Atmel is working with Bosch, Intersil, Kionix, MEMSIC and Sensirion to make sensor wings in order to work with the Xplained development board. By doing this, these companies not only increase the possibility that their sensors will get used, but they also make it easier to buy more of their sensors.”

Sag also discusses Atmel’s updates to its ARM Cortex A5-based solutions which are designed to expand the company’s capabilities.

“This chip is their SAMA5D3 MPU and is designed to increase the versatility, durability and gaining more features. Atmel’s goal is to enable these Cortex-A5 chips to be used in virtually any low-power application with or without the need for [a] display,” he adds.

“One of the variants of this chip, the SAMA5D36, is a superset device which enables the use of an LCD, two ethernet ports, and dual CAN support. All other models sacrifice on one of those three things, but this chip enables all three fully. There is also the SAMA5D36 and SAMA5D35 which support ambient temperatures in the range between -40 degrees to 105 degrees celsius. This would enable some very interesting industrial applications as well as potential for some automotive applications.”

The full text of the BSN article can be read here.