Maxim Integrated Announces Ultra-Compact 'hSensor Platform' for Wearables
Helps Design Healthcare and Fitness Applications Quickly and Easily

First, a question: When wearable device developers choose a reference board, what feature do they consider most important?
1. Low power consumption
2. Fast prototyping
3. Small size
4. Fast development verification

What is the answer to this question?

The answer is all of 1 through 4.

Developers' choice is singular: achieving maximum results using optimal materials. Particularly in the Internet of Things era, wearable devices must deliver maximum performance in minimum size, and they must complete development verification quickly to avoid falling behind in time-to-market.

Maxim Integrated Korea's (CEO Choi Heon-jung) ultra-compact 'hSensor Platform' for wearables is expected to lead in solving such developer challenges. Healthcare, wellness, and fitness application designers will be able to quickly and easily validate next-generation solutions using the ultra-compact hSensor Platform, the company explained.


▲ Ultra-Compact hSensor Board and Block Diagram

The reason the hSensor Platform emphasizes fast verification and development becomes clear when examining the complex sensor board development process. Designers who develop custom hardware and firmware must create a prototype, and creating a prototype requires considerable time for sensor evaluation and assessment of existing solutions. However, Maxim's hSensor Platform integrates all hardware components onto a printed circuit board (PCB) and confirms hardware performance immediately using 'ARM mbed' Hardware Development Kit (HDK), accelerating prototype development by 3 to 6 months.

The hSensor Platform, provided as a reference design (MAXREFDES100#), comprises a complete firmware debugger board with hSensor board drivers, a graphical user interface (GUI), and more, with firmware source code available from Maxim's website. By downloading firmware, designers can optimize their designs, evaluate more rapidly, and significantly reduce time-to-market.


▲Maxim Integrated Korea CEO Choi Heon-jung

The Maxim hSensor Platform features the ultra-low-power single-channel integrated biopotential AFE 'MAX30003', the high-sensitivity oxygen saturation and heart rate measurement sensor 'MAX30101', the clinical-grade temperature sensor 'MAX30205', the lowest quiescent current power management semiconductor (PMIC) 'MAX14720', along with inertial sensors (3-axis accelerometer, 6-axis accelerometer/gyroscope), atmospheric pressure sensor, flash memory, and low-power Bluetooth (BLE) in an ultra-compact form factor (25.4mm x 30.5mm).

The hSensor Platform is suitable for healthcare, wellness, and advanced fitness products such as chest straps, electrocardiogram (ECG) patches, wrist-worn devices, thermometers, disposable temperature measurement patches, blood oxygen measurement, smart scales, and biometric authentication.

Korea Country Manager Choi Heon-jung stated, "Although Maxim entered the sensor market only a few years ago, the sensor business has been growing since domestic major smartphone manufacturers began implementing HRM sensors. As the wearable market is expected to grow significantly in the future, we will continue expanding in this market."

Andrew Baker, Senior Director of Industry and Healthcare Products at Maxim Integrated, also said, "This new product represents a meaningful leap for Maxim. Currently, with wearable device development cycles shortening, the key is how quickly you can establish the concept and reduce development time. In particular, in the IoT era, protecting data securely is important, so Maxim's wearable solution, which incorporates security features, will aim to improve quality of life."

Interview

The following is an exclusive interview with Senior Director Andrew Baker.


▲Senior Director Andrew Baker

-First, please briefly introduce Maxim's sensor business.
Maxim's sensor business is considered important enough to be selected as a priority project for the 2017 fiscal year. We are expanding investment in this area and plan to continue growing it going forward.

-What differentiates the hSensor Platform from other reference boards?
Currently available reference boards on the market are quite large in size. However, the hSensor Platform was manufactured in an ultra-compact form factor. The reason is to enable developers to reuse it quickly. We made it ultra-compact to shorten the time required for rapid prototyping and concept validation.

-What enables rapid prototyping?
The concept of this newly launched hSensor Platform is that it has already (implemented) tasks that developers would otherwise need to repeat. By creating this board, we resolved various issues related to component interoperability and optimization. The hSensor Platform has been in development for approximately one year, and during that time, through numerous improvements, it has been optimized. Component interoperability is therefore guaranteed and verified. Because the board was designed with optimized performance, developers can create the products they want.

-The ability to minimize the solution likely benefited significantly from Maxim's integration technology.
Most components used on the board were designed from the beginning to be applicable to wearable devices. To that extent, creating such devices requires very high-level integration technology. Unlike existing products, we had to apply extremely high levels of integration technology for the wearable environment. For example, in the power management solution, we integrated multiple converters, and in the ECG AFE, we integrated diverse functions into one unit.

-Security is also an important factor in the healthcare field.
Maxim's MCU incorporates unique security solutions. Unlike typical cases where data encryption is handled through software, Maxim's encryption occurs at the hardware level. This demonstrates robustness against hacking and thorough security.

-What are your goals for the sensor business going forward?
Maxim is approaching diverse markets through sensors. Wearables represent one of these diverse markets, and we plan to target various other fields in the future.

-Is there anything you would like to say to Korean developers?
Ultimately, we launched the hSensor Platform to enable many people to evaluate and develop products themselves as we approach the mass market. We hope many developers will try using it once, shorten their development time, accelerate their time-to-market, and develop many excellent products.