Amius Semiconductor's New PCap04 Smart Capacitive Sensing Front-end for Speed, Resolution and Power Optimization

PCap04 Provides Up to 50kHz Sample Rate, Capacitance Measurements Down to 8aF

And no batteries can run just by collecting energy

Ams AG, the world's leading supplier of high performance sensor solutions, today introduced the new PCap04, a configurable capacitive sensing front end that enables sensor manufacturers to balance speed and resolution to match their designs demand.

When optimizing speed, PCap04 can capture up to 50,000 sensor measurements per second and digitize it. When the sampling speed is slow to optimize the accuracy, PCap04 can achieve 8aF measurement resolution.

The configurability of the device also allows the sensor manufacturer to make a good tradeoff between measurement speed and power consumption. In low-power mode, PCap04 only requires low current of 4.0μA. Emis Semiconductor has developed a demonstration board with no external power supply, where PCap04 relies on energy collected from RF fields generated by NFC readers such as cell phones.

The PCap04 IC is suitable for any sensing element whose capacitance changes. The device has six capacitive measurement channels that are ideally suited for use with other sensing components such as pressure, force, position, tilt, humidity, weight, level, and other sensing parameters.

The output of PCap04 can show the original measured capacitance value in PWM or PDM. The device also has a DSP to help process sensor measurements and convert it to digital values ​​via the I2C or SPI interface. It can handle a wide range of input capacitance values, as low as 1pF, up to 100nF.

The PCap04 offers a variety of built-in configurable options, including support for grounded, floating, differential, and differential ground sensor connections. The DSP can run Ames Semiconductor's open source code and user-generated code to implement functions such as linearization and conversion of measured values. AIM Semiconductor provides evaluation kits and easy-to-learn software development tools for design engineers to develop, test, and debug code on PCap04.

Jose Vinau, director of marketing for medical and special sensors at Aemis, said: “The PCap04 provides sensor manufacturers with a flexible alternative to other sensor front-ends that have fixed operating characteristics on the market today. This device offers unique advantages that enable sensor manufacturers to adjust The front end of the sensor operates to meet the needs of its specific application."

Author：Brittany Antonia （The author of article owns the copyright.）