Reducing BoM cost of IoT circuits

4th January 2016

Joe Bush

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For SoCs supplied by Lithium-ion or alkaline batteries, the actual voltage ranges from 4.4V, down to 2.0V over their lifetime. They empower IoT devices, which are often put in sleep mode in order to extend their battery life, requiring ultra-low voltage supplies for their Always-on and retention domains.

To comply with these requirements, the use of several stages of regulators is usually needed, increasing BoM cost, PCB area and power consumption. Indeed, an external regulator is dedicated to lowering the battery voltage down to a level of 3.3V or below, while one or several regulators are dedicated to supplying each power domain.

In order to achieve better optimisations, Dolphin Integration has launched its panoply of Over Voltage regulators. The Reusable power kit library now embeds components to regulate voltages down to 0.55V directly from the battery, leading to BoM cost reduction.

The Over Voltage (OV) panoply includes regulators at TSMC 55nm, compliant with the Delta Standard, with diverse optimisations:

• eSR-Niagara is a Switching Regulator suitable for efficiency requirements.
• qLR-Aubrey is a Linear Regulator with ultra-low quiescent current.
• The Retention Alternating Regulator combines two such regulators with a rigorous Control Unit to optimise both active and sleep modes of a SoC.
• An Over Protection module is featured to enable over voltage operation (up to 4.4V) while using a standard 3.3V process.

Mindful of the overall SoC optimisation, Dolphin Integration offers a complete set of solutions, suitable to reduce BoM cost and silicon area such as High Density Memories and Standard Cell Libraries compatible for their steady and in-rush current needs.