STMicroelectronics Announces Compact Motion Sensor to Improve Comfort and Measurement Accuracy of Medical Wearable and Implantable Devices

STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM, hereinafter ST) has announced the MIS2DU12, a MEMS accelerometer ideal for medical wearable and implantable devices that combines ultra-low power consumption, signal processing capabilities, and an ultra-compact size.

Produced with biocompatible materials and manufacturing processes, the MIS2DU12 features current consumption of just 20nA in power-down mode and less than 1µA in active mode, enabling long operating lives for implantable devices such as heart monitors and pacemakers. With a thickness of only 0.74mm and a footprint of 2 x 2mm, it also enables ultra-thin, lightweight patch sensors and improved wearer comfort.

In patch sensors such as glucose monitors and other biometric parameter sensors, the MIS2DU12's sensor fusion maintains high accuracy even under macroscopic movement or environmental stress. Consequently, these applications benefit from high sensitivity to micro-motions and high power efficiency. It integrates a dedicated motion processing engine capable of detecting free-fall, wake-up, single/double taps, and active/inactive states, as well as 6-axis/4-axis orientation detection. It also features a self-test function and an integrated temperature sensor.

Integrating motion processing circuitry for event detection and wake-up, the MIS2DU12 includes an anti-alias filter to maximize output data quality. This filter removes vibration sources out-of-band, reducing the load on the host application processor and lowering overall system power consumption. The sensor's current consumption is as low as 0.47μA in an ultra-low-power active mode with a 1.6Hz output data rate, and is kept to 5.6µA even when operating in normal mode with the anti-alias filter enabled.

The MIS2DU12 offers a selectable full scale of ±2g / ±4g / ±8g / ±16g, an output data rate ranging from 1.6Hz to 800Hz, and a wide operating temperature range of -40°C to +85°C. It integrates a 128-level FIFO buffer, providing large data storage and excellent flexibility to help reduce system power consumption.

The STEVAL-MKI255A adapter board is also available to quickly begin evaluations. This evaluation board, equipped with the MIS2DU12 sensor, features a standard DIL24 pin layout and can be used in combination with the STEVAL-MKI109D evaluation board. This evaluation board is equipped with a high-performance 32-bit microcontroller and supports ST's "MEMS Studio" GUI...