Feb 16, 2021Ambiq, a technology company located in Austin, Texas, has released the latest version of its low-power system-on-chip (SoC) and microcontroller (MCU) using a minimum of energy to capture sensor data on wireless devices, as well as process that data and send it to the cloud via a variety of wireless standards, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth Classic, Zibgee, Wi-Fi and NB-IoT. The company is promoting its latest Apollo SoC family product, the Apollo4, which was first released in September 2020.
Ambiq is expanding its product applications from consumer-based use cases, such as fitness trackers, to commercial and industrial solutions that include tire pressure monitoring, equipment condition management at factories, and hospital asset tracking. The Apollo products are aimed at providing complex processing of sensor data with radio functionality at extremely low power levels, the company explains. The SoCs operate at sub- and near-threshold voltage levels and consume less power, according to Scott Hanson, Ambiq's founder and CTO, and are thus capable of performing more data processing within a fixed power budget than similar products on the market.
The Apollo4
While the solutions provide connectivity between the device and a user via Bluetooth, Hanson notes, the company is developing additional RF radio functionality for future versions. To date, the company has shipped approximately 100 million SoC products that are built into a variety of products, including wearable devices, smart credit cards, utility meters, medical devices and building sensors, provided by Fossil, Huawei, OPPO, Garmin, Feitian and Shoreline IoT.
Ambiq was founded by researchers in 2010, based on work conducted at the University of Michigan. The team had been investigating the development of low-power microprocessors to enable devices to operate at energy levels considerably lower than those of existing Internet of Things (IoT) products. The result, Hanson says, was a device that could employ a greater number of sensors or process more data at the same or less battery power than existing systems. He says the startup's goal is to foster a cleaner, greener and safer environment by reducing power consumption in wireless devices, thereby extending battery capacity or enabling power harvesting.
Ambiq's Scott Hanson
"Our goal is to put sensors everywhere," Hanson explains, "and thus to make life easier and more intuitive, and make our workplaces and factories more efficient. Our clothes and jewelry should be able to sense our health. Our homes should respond to our voices and our physical condition. Our factories should recognize when they're having problems and take corrective action before they go 'line down'."
The company's MCU and SoC solutions leverage its Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT). Ambiq created its SPOT platform, as well as the Apollo products using that platform, so technology providers can build IoT functionality into wireless devices. According to Hanson, the firm has helped manufacturers create products that can operate for days or months, or sometimes years, on a single charge. The name "Ambiq," he explains, was derived from the words "ambient" and "IQ." The University of Michigan team was researching the SPOT technology for use in medical implants, as well as sensors for national defense, such as low-power devices installed at borders or battlefield sites.
Neither of these applications, however, were what fueled the company's product development. Instead, Hanson says, the firm began creating low-power devices to be deployed in products worn by individuals for health data, attached to products, or installed in walls or roadways. "We built a series of chips that are the lowest power in the world," he states. The SoC consists of an Arm microprocessor, a Bluetooth radio, data storage and security, and is capable of running an operating system to handle input form a user, as well as manage data from an array of sensors (for instance, a heart-rate sensor, a gyroscope or a vibration sensor) using a built-in sensor interface.
Traditionally, the power consumption of IoT devices has been determined by the device manufacturers, and Ambiq opted to provide those companies with lower-power chips. With SPOT, the system transistor operates at a subthreshold level by being only partially turned on when required. By using the lower amount of voltage when activated, Hanson explains, the device gains a quadratic savings in energy. Adapting a system that runs 1 volt to operate at just half a volt, for example, reduces energy consumption to a quarter of what it was at 1 volt, equating to a savings of 75 percent.
Ambiq is shipping millions of units per month for wearables, Hanson reports, and it is looking beyond consumer wearables to the commercial and industrial markets. For instance, the company provides its SoCs for smart-home applications, such as for use in remote controls or smart security sensors. Utility companies or manufacturers could employ the products to detect anomalies in equipment operation, based on measured sound or vibration that could indicate a system might require maintenance or inspection. The system is also being used with tire-pressure sensors. The SoC is built into a label that can be applied to a tire after manufacture to enable pressure detection via a smartphone.
While batteries are used in many cases, the SoC is being deployed with energy-harvesting technologies, including RF, solar and thermal. For example, a system with a capacitor that captures energy based on a tire's vibration could employ energy harvesting to provide data without a battery, or to boost a battery's lifetime. Such a solution, though, has not yet been deployed, Hanson notes. In healthcare, meanwhile, equipment could be tracked and sensors could identify operational details.
Devices using Ambiq's SoC or MCU spend most of their time in sleep mode, waking up only at a subthreshold level, then capturing data, running computations locally and going back to sleep. That is in contrast with typical IoT systems, Hanson says, in which the devices wake up, capture data and transmit it at full power. The SoC can compress that information before sending it, so data is captured only when needed. For consumer-based products, that could mean detecting important events, such as diagnosing that an individual has sleep apnea or a COVID-19 infection. On the industrial level, the same technology could detect a water leak, for instance, then forward that specific data.
Since the first Apollo product was launched in 2015, Hanson says, the company has created new versions offering increased memory, greater functionality and lower power consumption. "The Apollo4 is our most feature-rich microprocessor," he states, with approximately 10 times more speed using 10 times less energy. "We've made it a point to make something better every year." Ambiq reports that by 2020, it had sold 100 million chips used in most wearables by the top ten consumer manufacturers.
