New low-power atmospheric pressure sensors from Infineon bring greater accuracy to mobile and wearable devices as well as iot devices

     Infineon Technologies AG has announced a +/- 5cm ultra-high-resolution micro-MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical Systems) pressure sensor for mobile and wearable devices as well as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The DPS310 is a low-power digital atmospheric pressure sensor that facilitates the development of new and enhanced navigation, positioning, health, gesture recognition and weather monitoring applications.

     The DPS310 delivers accurate and stable performance over a wide temperature range, making it particularly suitable for indoor navigation and assisted location applications, such as floor detection in shopping plazas and parking lots, as well as outdoor navigation, where it can help improve navigation accuracy, or support "dead estimation" when a GPS signal is not available. In addition, it provides accurate data for calculating elevation gains and vertical velocities, suitable for the activity tracking characteristics of mobile and wearable health and exercise devices, while ultra-precision pressure measurements offer new possibilities for gesture recognition and detecting weather changes.

     The Infineon DPS310 pressure sensor is based on the capacitive sensing principle, rather than the piezoelectric principle used in most other digital pressure sensors. This ensures high accuracy over a wide range of temperatures, even with rapid temperature changes. This is an outstanding advantage because several heat sources can cause rapid changes in the internal temperature of a mobile terminal.

     In high-precision mode, the DPS310 can measure height with an accuracy of ±5 cm, enabling accurate transient detection, which is the biggest challenge for indoor navigation. For example, the high resolution of Infineon's pressure sensors helps determine that a person is moving from one floor of a building to another and triggers the download of a new floor plan. Sports and fitness applications that need to distinguish between the wearer's different types of "steps" and the corresponding calorie "burn rate" also require high-precision height measurements.

     For this new pressure sensor, Infineon used advanced semiconductor process technology originally developed specifically for Infineon automotive sensors. These automotive sensors are highly reliable and integrated in safety applications such as airbags. These technologies contribute to its compact form factor of only 2.0mm x 2.5mm x 1.0mm and low power consumption. In low power mode, current consumption is only 3μA if measured once per second, and less than 1μA in standby mode. An integrated FIFO that saves the last 32 measurements helps to further reduce overall system power consumption by extending the time the main processor stays in sleep mode during sensor readouts.

     The DPS310 delivers reliable, precise performance over pressure ranges from 300hPa to 1200hPa and temperatures from -40°C to 85°C. Thanks to multiple measurement and resolution modes, the device can be optimized for target applications. For example, a measurement per second configuration can be used for high-precision GPS altitude measurements, while multiple measurements per second can meet the needs of gesture recognition applications. Each sensor is individually calibrated and a calibration factor is used to accurately compensate the measured pressure and temperature values. Sensor measurement data and calibration coefficients can be obtained through the sensor's I2C/SPI digital interface.

     Dr. Roland Helm, Head of the Sensors business unit at Infineon, said: "Pressure sensors are increasingly becoming an indispensable element of mobile and wearable devices. As far as the Internet of Things is concerned, pressure sensors are also an important part of integrated consumer sensor solutions. "Using a proven semiconductor process combined with ultra-high resolution, good temperature stability, low-power operation and a small package size, the DPS310 allows developers to improve the functionality and user experience of a wide range of applications, from assisted positioning and navigation, to sports and fitness, to real-time weather monitoring."