LDO regulator improves system life and performance, says Texas Instruments
The company says that the TPS7A02 has the industry’s lowest quiescent current of less than 25 nA, which is 10 per cent that of competing devices. The low drop out linear regulator can help double battery life in power-sensitive industrial and personal electronics.
The regulator features low IQ control at light loads even in dropout conditions, allowing engineers to at least double the battery life of applications using a standard battery chemistry, such as lithium-ion, according to TI. It is also claimed to provide best-in-class transient response for faster wake-up, improving application response times and dynamic performance.
The regulator is in a common industry packages to allow for pin-to-pin drop-in replacement in existing designs.
The TPS7A02 helps engineers solve critical design challenges in power-sensitive, high-precision and low-power applications such as in the grid infrastructure, building automation, medical equipment and wearable devices.
For example, using the TPS7A02 in wireless video doorbell and security camera designs, engineers can achieve 24 months or more of battery life (up to four times the industry standard). In addition, the TPS7A02’s low shutdown IQ of 3.0nA can extend battery shelf life by as much as five times in portable medical and wearable applications compared to competing devices.
The TPS7A02 can settle in less than five microseconds for one to 50mA load transients; this is half the time of competing devices, reports TI. The ability to quickly respond to rapidly changing loads while providing minimal variation in output voltage, enables the regulator to enhance high-precision, low-power applications such as wireless IoT and portable medical devices, which require clean power to accurately acquire signals from around the body.
The regulator automatically transitions from an IQ-saving, low-load state to a high-load, fast-transient state without the need for any external circuitry or components. This allows engineers to use the TPS7A02 to shrink a design’s size by 70 per cent or to add more functionality to space-constrained applications, or lower system cost by using smaller boards.
The TPS7A02 can be implemented with other low IQ devices, such as TI’s family of ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontrollers, the SimpleLink CC2642R microcontroller, the TLV8802 nanopower operational amplifier or the TMP1075 low-power temperature sensor.
Pre-production samples of the TPS7A02 are now available in a four-pin small outline no-lead (X2SON) package measuring 1.0 x 1.0mm. A five-pin small outline transistor (SOT-23) package measuring 2.9 x 1.6mm will be available later this year. A four-pin die-size ball grid array (DSBGA) package measuring 0.65 x 0.65mm will become available in early 2020.
