Bosch Smart Sensor Hub BHA260AB for Ultra-low Power Wearable Applications

Bosch BHA260AB is one of the latest members of the family of ultra-low power programmable smart sensor hubs, which include Bosch Sensortec’s new 32-bit Fuser2 microcontroller, a 3-axis MEMs accelerometer sensor and a powerful software framework containing pre-installed sensor fusion and other sensor processing software within a small 22-pad LGA package. The configurable Fuser2 Core boasts a low 950uA current draw in the efficient 20 MHz Long Run mode and 2.8mA in the high performance 50 MHz Turbo mode,

The BHA260AB features 256 KB on-chip SRAM and 144 KB on-chip ROM that is preloaded with the software framework and up to 8 MB external flash memory. The BHA260AB is ideal as an all-in-one solution for always-on sensor application, e.g., fitness tracking, step counting, indoor navigation and gesture recognition. The following block diagram shows the typical application topology of the BHA260AB smart sensor hub.

Bosch BHA260AB ultra-low power smart hubs application topology

The Fuser2 core is configured to operate at 20 MHz in Long Run Mode and 50 MHz in Turbo Mode. The Fuser2 core can boot from many different hosts, e.g., a Cortex-M0 MCU, or any multicore application processors and it is also able to run standalone when booting from an external flash memory.

Features

Hardware

        Integrated CUP Core

  • ARC EM4 CPU with ARCv2 16/32 bit instruction set (up to 3.6 CoreMark/MHz)
  • Floating Point Unit (FPU) / Memory Protection Unit (MPU)
  • 4-channel micro DMA controller / 2-way associative Cache Controller
  • Long Run mode: 950 uA @ 20 MHz running CoreMark
  • Turbo mode: 2.8 mA @ 50 MHz running CoreMark

Memory

  • 256kByte on-chip SRAM
  • 144kByte on-chip ROM preloaded with software

Connectivity

  • Host interface configurable as SPI or I2C
  • 2 master interfaces (1x selectable SPI/I2C master and 1xI2C master)
  • Up to 16 GPIOs
  • Fast I/O operations:
    • SPI and GPIOs up to 50MHz
    • I2C up to 3.4MHz

    Integrated Sensor (3-DoF MEMs Accelerometer)

  • 16-bit 3-axis accelerometer

       Pin-Out

    Software

  • Open sensor development platform
  • Integrated Event-driven Software Framework and OpenRTOS™ with virtual sensor stack
  • Integrated BSX sensor fusion software for reliable 3D motion tracking, activity recognition, and more
  • Powerful SDK for easy customization and support for
    • Metaware C Compiler for ARC
    • GNU C Compiler for ARC

Applications

  • 24/7 always-on sensor processing at ultra-low power consumption
  • 3D orientation, step counting, position tracking, activity recognition, pose and head tracking, context awareness
  • Wrist-mounted, hearables, eyewear, and other wearable devices
  • Smartphones and other mobile communication devices
  • AR/VR/MR headset and controller devices

Block Diagram

BHA260AB Typical Application block diagram
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