As an unavoidable technology for IoT, the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol is designed to enable very low-power consumption devices. To save power, designers of BLE ICs need to implement a wake-up system, sufficiently accurate from a time tracking point-of-view, to ensure that paired devices operate in the same time-window. The higher the clock drift, the earlier a slave device needs to wake-up, thereby wasting significant power consumption over time.
Dolphin Integration’s oscillator IPs, specifically designed for the Always-On Domain, provide unprecedented optimization capabilities to BLE designers needing to find the best compromise between ultra-low power consumption, low BoM cost, high accuracy of frequency setting and fast power-up.
Discover our low frequency oscillators
The qOSC-XTAL-LP-32k-co.01 crystal oscillator IP consumes as little as 50 nA at 32.768 kHz without requiring any external capacitor. It is also designed to reach a high accuracy of frequency, as good as 50 ppm, through a guided addition of capacitors.
This crystal oscillator IP is provided either stand-alone or as part of an ultra-low power Real Time Clock (RTC) IP, the RTC-32k-CAL.01, and can be complemented with the fully integrated qOSC-RC-LP-32k-co.01 RC oscillator IP which operates at 32 kHz with ultra-low power (70 nA) and fast wake-up time (200 us).
Low-power IC designers may ensure at once the fastest startup time and accurate time tracking by combining the high-accuracy crystal oscillator (qOSC-XTAL-LP-32k-co.01) with the fast wake-up RC oscillator (qOSC-RC-LP-32k-co.01).
Such oscillator and RTC IPs complement the panoply of Low Power IPs from Dolphin Integration to achieve power consumption as low as 0.5 uA for a feature-rich always-on domain. They are designed to operate as low as 0.55 V @ 55 nm uLP/uLP eF to enable a single and extremely low voltage operation for the whole always-on domain with low power awakening triggers, low quiescent voltage regulators….
