Wireless MCU in mechanical shock and vibration environments

So what is BAW?

It stands for Bulk Acoustic Wave, it’s based on the TI MEMS technology. It has a piece of electric material which is sandwiched between two electrodes. And this material converts the electrical energy to a mechanical acoustic energy, thereby producing stable oscillations.

TI BAW technology provides significant performance benefits for the IOD products that are operating under vibrations and mechanical shock conditions. For example, let’s take an automated factory. So over there, you would want to know the performance of the parts ahead of the time when they are exposed to the mechanical vibrations or shock conditions so that you could replace those parts ahead of the time. This is called predictive maintenance and that would help with any factory down-times which could come with those fatigued parts.

With a BAW-enabled microcontroller, TI could affix this to be a vibrating motor or a pump and actually be able to determine if a part is going bad before it actually goes bad.

This video from Texas Instruments demonstrates how our devices are robust and are able to operate through harsh conditions like vibration and shock. TI use a military standard 883, method 2002 that exposes the parts to acceleration force of 1,500g. TI also uses BAW CC2652RB, which is based on BAW technology and an external quartz crystal solution.

In the video, it is explained how TI compare these two radios under the shock conditions. And how users can see significant performance improvement by using the BAW technology. It is very critical to have a stable communication for the link to maintain stable clocks. And the main source of the clock comes from the crystals, quartz crystals or the BAW technology that TI are using, and that has to be stable.

For more information, watch the video below.