Wearables design simplified with ultra-low power, high-performance MCUs

Designers can develop high-performance fitness and medical wearable devices with enhanced functionality using Maxim Integrated’s MAX32630 and MAX32631 ARM Cortex-M4F microcontrollers. With the fast-growing market for personal wellness and medical wearable applications, new complex demands are being placed on the internal electronic components of devices. They must be small, yet have a high degree of functionality, processing capability, and optimal integration of peripherals. Devices must also have high accuracy and low noise, as well as extremely low power dissipation in various operational modes to ensure sufficient operating life on a single charge. The company’s MAX32630 and MAX32631 microcontrollers address these concerns with a variety of features. The devices’ sophisticated power management maximizes run time and provides the lowest energy consumption in the industry of active (127µW/MHz), DMA (32µW/MHz), and retention sleep (3.5µW) modes. The microcontrollers offer abundant onboard code (2MB flash), data (512KB SRAM), and cache (8KB) memory, which facilitate running third-party applications and logging sensor data, thereby improving the overall user experience. Interfaces include SPI, SPI XIP, UART, I²C, 1-Wire, and USB ports. Peripheral functions include six 32-bit timers, clock, 66 general-purpose I/O pins, pulse train engine, and 10-bit analog/digital converter (7.8ksps) The MAX32631 adds a trust protection unit (TPU) that enables advanced hardware encryption and authentication features, providing customers with a complete security toolbox to protect IP, algorithms, and user data. “The combination of ultra-low power, high performance, and small footprint of the MAX32630 and MAX32631 offers designers a robust solution that has been architected ground up for wearable medical and fitness products,” said Prem Nayar, director, medical and wearables micros, Maxim Integrated. “The family of MAX326 microcontrollers provides sensor fusion, flexible design, and connectivity to further enhance the user experience.”