Atmel Corporation

Ronan Barzic

Frode Milch Pedersen

Thierry Gourbilleau

Patrice Menard

Mickael Le Dily

Stefan Markus Schabel

Marc Laurent

Olivier Husson

Fredrik Larsen

Morten Werner Lund

Jan Rune Herheim

Kristoffer Koch

Erwin Dotzauer

A microcontroller system includes a higher power reference voltage circuit and a lower power reference voltage circuit configured to draw less power than the higher power reference voltage circuit when enabled. The system includes a power state logic controller configured to enable the lower power reference voltage circuit to provide a first regulated voltage during a power saving mode, and, on exiting the power saving mode, enable the higher power reference voltage circuit to provide a second regulated voltage.

Reference voltage circuits in microcontroller systems

A microcontroller system is organized into power domains. A power manager of the microcontroller system can change the power configuration of a power domain in response to event from an event generating module without activating a processor of the microcontroller system.

Configuring power domains of a microcontroller system

A device includes an RC oscillator circuit and incorporates various features that individually and in combination can help improve the stability or accuracy of the oscillator output frequency. The oscillator circuit is operable to provide a tunable output frequency and includes a bias circuit switchable between first and second modes of operation. One of the modes has less drift in oscillator bias current relative to the other mode. The device also includes drift compensation circuitry that is operable to compensate for drift in the oscillator output frequency in a closed-loop mode of operation based on a comparison of the oscillator output frequency with a reference frequency. The device further includes a processor operable to compensate for temperature-based drift in the oscillator frequency in an open-loop mode of operation based on a measured temperature value in the vicinity of the oscillator circuit.

High accuracy RC oscillator

A low-cost charge injection mechanism may enable oversampling to be used on low frequency signals by injecting dither noise into the ADC input. The dither noise can reduce the quantization noise allowing even direct current (DC) signals to be oversampled correctly. A low-cost charge injection mechanism can also be used to improve the ENOB by characterizing the ADC and digitally correcting the converted signal for non-linearity errors such as INL. Reducing INL errors may also allow a higher degree of oversampling to be used to further improve the ENOB.

Charge injection mechanism for analog-to-digital converters

Growing community of inventors

Tiller, Norway

Ronan Barzic