STMicroelectronics (STM), a leading portable and consumer applications IC vendor, has announced a power-efficient and very small STTS751 digital temperature sensor (DTS) that will enable portable gadgets to benefit from features like intelligent thermal protection.
Since modern-day consumer lifestyles require unparalleled portability and performance from gadgets such as eReaders, digital signage, base-stations, solid-state drives, notebook computers, and smartphones, electronic circuits are being packed in small spaces causing heat generation, which in turn cause poor reliability and failure.
This sensor is installed on the circuit board for feeding back accurate temperature data permitting the system to manage the temperature through shutting down the circuitry or activating a cooling fan. It is tinier than early-generation sensors, measures a mere 2 x 2mm, has a very low 50-microamp operating current, an energy saving 3-microamp as the standby current, as well as the one-shot operation that renders the device very useful for battery-powered devices. One-shot mode enables the sensor to be a sleep state for prolonged periods, waking only to deliver an instantaneous reading on being triggered by the system.
The accuracy of the sensor is within 1„aC. The sensor is able to communicate its temperature data through a System-Management Bus (SMBus) interface that is an industry standard. This permits easy design of the sensor into a broad range of professional and consumer equipment like telecom and Internet infrastructure, solid-state drives, smart batteries, large display backlights, routers, servers and e-readers.
Key features of the sensor include programming ability to cater for four different resolutions and ten different conversion rates, 2.25 V operation from +125„aC to -40„aC range, interrupt and thermostat dual alarms, 21 ms conversion time usually at a resolution of 10-bit.
The sensor is currently available as a leaded SOT23-6L or six-pin, 2 x 2mm sized UDFN-6L leadless package.