June 9, 2014. Spansion Inc. has announced a new family of power management integrated circuits (PMICs) for energy harvesting that can enable a greener Internet of things (IoT) by eliminating the need for or extending the life of batteries in a multitude of IoT devices from individual wearable electronics to the nodes in wireless sensor networks.
“Spansion has a long-standing commitment to the environment and has been recognized globally and formally as a green partner by customers, governments and industry watchdogs for our policies, processes, and results in reducing waste and resources,” said Tom Sparkman, senior vice president of Spansion's Analog Business Unit. “Our customers can say goodbye to battery usage in their next-generation electronics. Coupled with our low-power MCUs and the energy-budget calculator in the Spansion Easy DesignSim support tool, the Spansion Energy Harvesting PMICs offer a differentiated solution that can help our customers offer more eco-friendly devices across a broad spectrum of applications.”
The Spansion Energy Harvesting family includes the MB39C811, an ultra-low-power buck PMIC with dual input that enables efficient harvesting from both solar and vibration energy, and the MB39C831, an ultra-low-voltage boost PMIC for solar or thermal applications. The Spansion Energy Harvesting family of devices works seamlessly with Spansion FM0+ microcontrollers (MCUs), ultra-low-power microcontrollers (based on the ARM® Cortex-M0+ core) for industrial and cost-sensitive applications with low-power requirements.
The Spansion Easy DesignSim, a comprehensive online design support tool with the industry's only energy-budget calculator, simplifies application design by calculating the energy-budget balance while providing a recommended bill of materials (BOM) list that can be purchased online.
Spansion has a strong ecosystem of energy harvesting and storage device partners around the globe.
“Spansion's Energy Harvesting PMICs will bring a positive impact to the IoT market. These PMICs harvest natural energy to enable wireless sensor terminal/node to operate without batteries,” said Atsushi Hitomi, department head of the EDLC Business Unit of TDK. “Combining Spansion's solution with TDK EDLC Amorphous Silicon Film Solar Cell and RF modules, we can enable wireless sensors to connect to the network everywhere and accelerate cloud-based services.”
www.spansion.com/fjdocuments/fj/DATASHEET/e-ds/MB39C831_DS405-00014.pdf