Multi-Sensor Interface Circuit

ZMD announced the multi-channel ZMD21013 sensor signal interface circuit. The device is focusing on multiple sensor-controlled, battery-powered, microcontroller-based mobile electronic products. The device is an enabler for a myriad of consumer, medical and industrial products requiring multiple sensors. Sample devices benefiting from the MUSic family include wearable monitors for assessing blood pressure, glucose, heart rate levels; consumer devices utilizing altimeters, barometers and navigation functions; and industrial instruments like scales and flow and pressure monitors.

 The ZMD21013 incorporates an analog front-end, including a programmable gain amplifier, a 16-bit Delta-Sigma-ADC and a power-saving analog sampling architecture. The result is an average power consumption of 25-to-30 µW during normal operations and less than 1µW in idle mode. Beyond the common signal measurement mode, the ZMD21013 supports an additional temperature measurement mode and an auto-zero mode, which allows monitoring of long-term stability drifts and offsets for compensation and correction purposes. The ZMD21013 application-specific standard product (ASSP) contains an on-chip clock generator and a 16x8bit EEPROM to store non-volatile configuration data, calibration coefficients, and an optional user-programmable identification. An SPI-compatible serial interface connects the ZMD21013 to the customer's specific external microcontroller or digital signal processor. The ZMD21013 can be ordered for consumer (0 degrees C to +70 degrees C) as well as for industrial temperature ranges (-25 degrees C to +85 degrees C).

 Availability

The ZMD21013 will be available as engineering samples in the first quarter of this year and will be available in quantities in the second quarter. The devices are available in TSSOP20 (4.4mm x 4.6mm) packages. Unit prices start at 1.49 EUR, or USD 2.10, in volumes of 1k devices or more.