Cypress introduces the world's lowest-power energy harvesting power management IC for battery-free wireless sensor nodes

     Cypress Semiconductor Corporation has announced a new line of energy-harvesting power management integrated circuits (PMIC) for tiny, solar-powered wireless sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT). With the lowest power consumption in the world, the new device is a single-chip energy harvesting PMIC that can use solar panels with an area of only 1 cm2. The new PMIC devices are ideal for battery-free wireless sensor nodes (WSNS) for monitoring physical and environmental conditions for smart homes, commercial buildings, factories, infrastructure and agriculture. Cypress also introduced a $49 development kit that includes an EZ-BLE PRoC module for Bluetooth Low power connectivity, providing a complete battery-free energy harvesting solution for the first S6AE101A PMIC in this new series.

     By 2020, the market for WSN IoT devices is expected to reach 5 billion, enabling battery-free applications to become popular, thereby reducing costs and maintenance. The deployment of WSNS may have size and available light energy limitations, thus limiting the size and power output of the solar module and the start-up power consumption of the energy harvesting PMIC. Cypress's new energy harvesting PMIC successfully addresses these challenges with a start-up power consumption of just 1.2uW, four times lower than the strongest competing solutions, and operating currents as low as 250nA to maximize power for sensing, processing and communication functions in the target application. The fully certified small size EZ-BLE PRoC module is based on the PRoC programmable on-chip RF solution from Cypress and can be combined with PMIC devices to form a low-power, easy-to-use energy harvesting system solution.

     Kiyoe Nagaya, vice president, Analog Products, Cypress, said: "The most competitive new wireless sensor nodes that will drive the growth of the Internet of Things are self-powered, can be deployed anywhere, have a lifespan of more than a decade, and require minimal deployment and maintenance costs. With our new energy harvesting PMIC and EZ-BLE PRoC Smart Bluetooth modules, Cypress offers developers the complete solar-powered WSN solution they need to create battery-free iot devices."