MCU saves medical power
26 February 2008
Personal medical devices, like blood pressure monitors, need ultra-low-power operation
Ultra-low-power 8bit micrcontrollers (MCUs) from Freescale are claimed to enhance power efficiency and extend battery life in medical devices and portable devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.
The MC9S08QE8 (QE8) MCUs have a stop current of less than 300nA and run current as low as 7µA. It is designed for operation from 1.8V to 3.6V.
The devices meet the requirements of portable designs through optimised peripherals that enable lower operating voltage and current. The MCU can run off of an ultra-low-power 32kHz oscillator that consumes less than one 1µA of current. The device also includes battery-saving features, such as two ultra-low-power stop modes, low-power run and wait modes, 6µsec wake-up time from stop3 mode, and clock gating registers to disable clocks or unused peripherals.
The device is pin- and software-compatible with the company's MC9S08Qx family of ultra-low-power MCUs and with the Flexis QE128 devices for migration from 8bit to 32bit architectures.
Package options are 16pin PDIP, 16pin TSSOP, 20pin SOIC, 28pin SOIC, and 32pin LQFP. The latter is sampling now.
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