Contributing to applications that use the gyroscope sensor always ON

ROHM Group's Kionix announced that it has developed the 6-axis accelerometer and gyrocombo sensors "KXG07" and "KXG08," which are ideal for applications that aim to realize motion sensing with low power consumption, such as smartphones, wearable devices, and game consoles.

These devices do not use a sensor signal detection method based on general amplitude detection, but instead adopt a detection method based on phase detection developed exclusively by Kionix, thereby miniaturizing the large-scale amplification circuit required for conventional gyro sensors and realizing a low power consumption of 0.6mA, which is 50% lower than that of general products.

In addition, the current consumption can be significantly reduced to 0.2mA during sensing through the intermittent operation mode. In addition, it is equipped with synchronization capabilities with the MCU, 4096 bytes of buffer memory, and data acquisition capabilities from external sensors, contributing to load reduction when building sensor applications.

The KXG07 uses a 16-pin LGA package ( 3mm × 3mm × 0.9mm) , and the KXG08 uses a 14-pin LGA package ( 2.5mm × 3mm × 0.9mm) , allowing for compatibility depending on the board design. Sample shipments of the new products began in July 2016, and mass production is scheduled to begin in October 2016 with a production capacity of 1 million units per month.

ROHM Group plans to continue developing low-power consumption and compact sensor devices to meet the demands of the mobile device and IoT markets.

"Recently, with the increase in devices equipped with sensors, such as smartphones and game consoles, the demand for sensors is growing day by day. However, gyro sensors have higher current consumption compared to accelerometers and geomagnetic sensors," said a ROHM official. "Since it is difficult to adopt them in applications where current consumption is a barrier or in applications where the gyro sensor needs to be kept always ON, we have developed a product that can solve this problem."