ICU-20201 is a miniature, ultra-low power, long-range ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) transceiver. Based on Chirp’s patented MEMS technology, the ICU-20201 is a system-in-package that integrates a nominally 85kHz PMUT (Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer) together with a 2nd generation ultra-low power SoC (System on Chip) in a miniature, reflowable package.
The SoC is designed for overall low system power and for ease of use with external host processors. Low power is achieved through custom digital circuitry to process and buffer the raw sensor readings. This keeps the integrated microcontroller in a low power idle state until needed. For ease of use, the microcontroller can process the raw sensor readings into high level signals, such as range to nearby target(s), or events, such as presence, which can be directly read by the host processor. The SoC communicates with the host processor over SPI at up to 13MHz.
Complementing Chirp’s other ultrasonic ToF sensor products, ICU-20201 provides accurate range measurements to targets at distances up to 5m. Based on ultrasonic pulse-echo measurements, the sensor works in any lighting condition, including full sunlight, and provides millimeter-accurate range measurements independent of the target’s color and optical transparency. The sensor’s Field-Of-View (FOV) can be customized and enables simultaneous range measurements to multiple objects in the FOV. Several available algorithms can further process the echo information for a variety of usage cases in a range of applications.
