TDK’s ultrasonic time-of-flight sensor enhances sensing range and accuracy for smart home applications

TDK Corporation announces the start of full-scale production of its InvenSense SmartSonic™ ICU-30201 ultrasonic time-of-flight (ToF) sensor. The ICU-30201 enhances the contextual awareness of products that require accurate presence, proximity, and distance measurements, such as robotics, drones, alarm devices, door locks, camera devices, smart building systems, and more.

The extended maximum range of ICU-30201 enables room-scale presence sensing and long-range obstacle detection, which enables a new class of smart home and smart building devices. It is the latest release in the SmartSonicTM sensor family to embed a more powerful on-chip processor with higher computational power. TDK offers a number of algorithms, including rangefinding and presence-sensing, which run on-chip, offloading the system MCU and saving power, while customers can also write their own algorithms for the sensor. The new bottom port package solution allows easy mechanical integration.

The ICU-30201 integrates a MEMS PMUT (Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer) with an ultra-low power SoC (system on chip) in a miniature reflowable package. Based on ultrasonic pulse-echo measurements, the ToF sensor provides highly accurate and robust range measurements to targets at distances up to 9.5m, in any lighting condition, including full sunlight and independently of the target’s color and optical transparency.

The ICU-30201, in an ultra-compact package footprint of 5.17 x 2.68 x 0.9 mm, is now available from multiple distributors worldwide (more info).