austriamicrosystems - Hall-sensor IC based on contactless sensing for 360° navigation in human-machine interfaces

The AS5013 is a complete Hall-sensor IC for human-machine interface (HMI) applications requiring low power. This simplifies software integration challenges for joystick navigation in products such as cell phones and other handheld devices, e.g. MP3 players, PDAs, GPS receivers, Digital Still Cameras, gaming consoles, and remote controls. The AS5013 single-chip IC includes user-selectable power-saving modes, 5 integrated Hall sensing elements for detecting up to ±2 mm lateral displacement, a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC), an XY coordinate and motion detection engine, and a smart power management controller. The XY coordinate registers and magnetic field information for each Hall-sensor element are transmitted over the I²C interface to the host processor.

The HMI device also provides 2 interrupt modes (motion detect, data ready) and 2 operating modes: idle mode, with less than 3 µA current consumption, and low-power mode, with selectable readout rate. The low-power AS5013 operates over a power supply range of 2.7 to 3.6 V, and down to 1.7 V peripheral supply voltage.

Alfred Binder, Marketing Manager for HMI (human-machine interface) at austriamicrosystems stated, “With the AS5013 Hall-sensor based contactless IC at the heart of the EasyPoint™ joystick module, designers have a user interface device that is a highly reliable solution for use in a variety of portable communication devices. In addition, the AS5013 reduces development time by including an on-chip processing engine so that designers don’t have to run complex algorithms on the host processor.”

Specified over an operating temperature of -20 to +80°C, the AS5013 Hall-sensor IC operates from a 3.3 V power supply and is offered in a 16-pin 4 x 4 x 0.55 mm QFN package. The EasyPoint™ module is available as small as
8 x 8 x 1.5 mm.