ADC provides intelligent system power management

Texas Instruments has introduced the 12-bit ADS7924 successive approximation (SAR) analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) for remote sensor signal monitoring applications.

Through intelligent system power management features, the 2.2-V ADS7924 works with any low-power system requiring sensor monitoring to potentially lower power across the system by more than 50 per cent.

Once programmed through its I2C interface, the device can operate independently, periodically waking itself to scan all four ADC channels.

This frees the MCU to process other activities or power down entirely to yield significant power savings in energy harvesting, medical, communications, remote sensor signal monitoring and portable applications.

The ADS7924 uses 5uW of power when programmed to scan all four channels every 10ms.

For applications requiring additional signal conditioning, the device can share one operational amplifier for all four channels.

The ADS7924 can wake up and shut down the op amp to synchronise with the sampling and conversion timing of the ADS7924 for additional power savings.

The ADS7924 can reach maximum performance for energy harvesting and portable medical devices, as well as communications and remote sensor signal monitoring applications by using TI's ultra-low power MSP430 MCU platform.

TI's ADS7924EVM and ADCPro modular software system for evaluating analogue-to-digital converters can be combined to help designers rapidly evaluate systems.

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