Cypress Offers Low-Power PMICs for Solar-Powered Wireless Sensors

With ultra-low-power becoming a trend in electronics — particularly as the Internet of Things becomes more widely adopted — companies are rolling out more and more components that rely on energy harvesting for power.

Cypress Semiconductor is supporting this trend with a new family of energy-harvesting power management integrated circuits (PMICs) that enable the development of tiny solar-powered wireless sensors for Internet of Things applications, the company said in a press release.

PMICs are among a number of electronic workhorses like MCUs and switches that now use harvested energy for power to maximize energy efficiency for IoT and other applications that have low-power demands.

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Wireless sensors, in particular, are keys to the emerging IoT paradigm, in which numerous devices will communicate wirelessly in various automation systems in the home, factories, and other scenarios. Because of their size and power demands, energy-harvesting electronic components are a good fit for use in these sensors.

The new line of energy-harvesting PMICs can harvest energy in a number of ways — from sunlight, vibrations, and thermal variations -- making them flexible and extending the battery life of sensors for IoT applications, according to Cypress. They also offer dual imports, i.e., allowing energy harvesting from two sources simultaneously to provide more power reliability.

Due to their small size, the PMICs can be used with solar cells as small as 1 square cm, the company said. Further, the devices are fully integrated, making them a good fit for use in battery-free wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) that monitor physical and environmental conditions for smart homes, commercial buildings, factories, and other infrastructure and agriculture applications.

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The WSN market is on the rise, expected to grow to 5 billion units by 2020, according to Cypress, creating an opportunity for components for these nodes.

With solar-powered devices, placement of the nodes is pivotal because the power output of the solar module and the startup power available for the PMIC may be limited by the amount of light available to harvest. To address this challenge in its new line of PMICs, Cypress has designed them with a very low startup power of of 1.2 uW and consumption current as low as 250 nA, so the power available can be used for sensing, processing, and communications functions, the company said.

Cypress is pairing the first PMIC in the new line, the S6AE101A, with the EZ-BLE PRoC module for Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, along with supporting software, in a $49 kit. Other devices in the new line will be available later this year.

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer who has written about technology and culture for more than 15 years. She has lived and worked as a professional journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco and New York City. In her free time she enjoys surfing, traveling, music, yoga and cooking. She currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal.