Munich, Germany – February 19, 2016 – Infineon Technologies AG and GoerTek Inc. launched two high-resolution, highly integrated optical sensors. The optical chips deliver the precise measurement, small size and ultra-low power consumption demanded by ambient light sensing, proximity detection, heart rate and pulse oximetry monitoring applications in smartdevices. The sensor solutions offer best-in-class performance for headphones, fitness bands, smart watches and phones.They are integrating three LED outputs, a photodetector, a low-noise analog front-end, a digital interface and a state machine into a single die. For best application results the bare die is either packaged with an infrared or a green LED or can drive up to three external LEDs.
The sensors offer a fully integrated solution for optical heart rate measurement featuring anI2C interface for a programmable sample rate of up to 256 per second. This allows a significantly better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than discrete alternatives. Additionally, monitoring algorithms can filter out motion artifacts and deliver precise heart rate and pulse oximetry measurements during exercise. High optical sensor resolution enables accurate measurement across the widest possible variety of skin types, while high optical sensitivity reduces photo diode area and drives down LED power consumption with a typical 300 μALED current on fair skin. A standby current of just 0.3 μA further reduces power consumption.
