Energy-harvesting power management ICs for wireless sensor nodes

Cypress Semiconductor has introduced what it believes to be the lowest-available-power PMICs that enable an integrated module size of 1 cm² for solar-powered wireless sensor node (WSN) designs.
Intended to manage solar-powered wireless sensors for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, these parts are said to be the lowest-power, single-chip Energy Harvesting PMICs, and can be used with solar cells as small as 1 cm². Cypress offers a complete, battery-free energy harvesting solution that pairs the S6AE101A PMIC, the first device in the new family, with the EZ-BLE PRoC module for Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, along with supporting software, in a $49 kit.

The Cypress Energy Harvesting PMIC devices offer a startup power of 1.2 µW – one-quarter that of the nearest competitor, Cypress asserts, and consumption current as low as 250 nA, maximizing the power available for the sensing, processing and communications functions of a target application. The fully-certified, small-form-factor EZ-BLE PRoC module, which is based on Cypress’s PRoC BLE Programmable Radio-on-Chip solution, works with the PMIC devices to contribute to the low power and ease-of-use of an energy harvesting system solution.
The Cypress S6AE101A Energy Harvesting PMIC is sampling now, with production expected in the fourth quarter of 2015. Cypress offers the $49 Solar-Powered IoT Device Kit that contains a baseboard with a solar module and a Bluetooth Low Energy-USB bridge. Cypress PMICs are supported by the Easy Design Sim, a free, web-based simulation tool for Cypress’s PMIC solutions used to validate Energy Harvesting System (EHS) designs, including the bill-of-materials (BOM), schematic and the power consumed (µW) by the sensing, processing and communications functions of a target application.
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