Energy-harvesting power management ICs for wireless sensor nodes

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, maximising 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 0 core of PRoC BLE, two crystals, an on-board chip antenna, metal shield and passive components, all in a 10 x 10 x 1.8-mm form factor. Engineers designing with the module can apply to add

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