Compliant sensor hub with Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Next-gen Android M sensor hub solution has been announced by Bosch Sensortec, a ready-to-deploy solution for smartphones, tablets and other devices running the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. The solution integrates an advanced feature software library to leverage Bosch Sensortec’s high performance sensor hubs, motion and environmental sensors.

Compliant with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, this sensor hub solution supports full sensor data fusion with 3-, 6- or 9-axis sensors.

The solution can accommodate a variety of integrated solutions combining Bosch Sensortec sensor hubs with individual sensors, i.e. BMA4-series, BHA250, BMM150, BMG250, BMI160, BMX160 and BME680. The library complies with the Android M Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) 6.0.

In power-saving mode, with all its low power sensors enabled, the solution significantly reduces power demand down to a mere 0.1mW. In full operating mode, with all of its 29 motion sensors, 7 environmental sensors, Android M specified virtual sensors, always-on, wakeup and non-wakeup features running, the power consumption still remains low at approximately 10mW. Such power management capability is far superior to comparable solutions available in the market today.

Tailored software cuts time-to-market

The modern, feature-packed smartphone is overloaded with power-hungry applications, therefore customized low-power solutions are critically important, particularly for always-on tasks. At the same time, smartphone OEMs have increasingly shorter design-to-launch cycles in order to keep up with market expectations and changing user preferences.

To reduce time-to-market cycle times and to support architectures with various power requirements, the solution’s fully integrated software library provides all Android functions: significant motion, step counter, step detector, tilt detector, linear acceleration, gravity detection, geomagnetic rotation, game rotation vector, rotation vector, heading with magnetic calibration, batching, activity recognition, gestures, hifi and pedestrian dead reckoning.

Earlier versions of this software library have already been successfully deployed in smartphones from several leading manufacturers. The new library delivers improved performance in fundamental virtual sensor features such as step detection and counting, and offers full Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) update functionality (in collaboration with OEMs’ FOTA service).

The solution has been successfully benchmarked against the leading smartphones available in the market for key performance indicators such as static and dynamic accuracy, memory consumption, calibration and orientation stabilization time and distortion detection.