ROHM develops RPR-0720, a compact proximity sensor equipped with a VCSEL, which contributes to the miniaturization of wearable devices such as wireless headphones and the increase of battery capacity.
ROHM (headquartered in Kyoto City, Japan), one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, has developed a compact proximity sensor, "RPR-0720," with a size of 2.0mm x 1.0mm, for a wide range of applications that require off-wear detection and proximity detection, including wearable devices such as wireless headsets and smartwatches.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) has become more popular in recent years, sensors that play an important role in IoT devices need to be smaller in size and higher in performance, and ROHM's lineup of proximity sensors, which incorporate light-emitting elements and light-receiving elements in an integrated package, is used in a wide range of fields, from mobile devices to industrial equipment, due to its high degree of applicability. Especially in the field of wearable devices, ROHM has developed a compact proximity sensor that integrates a VCSEL and a sensor IC in an integrated package against a backdrop of increasing demand for design flexibility as the number of components used increases due to the rising performance of products.
The new product is an optical sensor module that utilizes a VCSEL*, which has a beam divergence angle narrower than that of an LED, as the light emitting element and a sensor IC as the light receiving element. By optimizing the module structure using ROHM's own components, a small size has been achieved, and the product's mounting area has been reduced by approximately 78% compared to previous products. In addition, the equipped VCSEL supports a wide input voltage range of 2.7V to 4.5V, eliminating the need for peripheral booster circuits (e.g., one booster power supply IC, three capacitors, one coil, etc.) when using lithium-ion batteries, which contributes to the miniaturization of the application products and secures space for increasing battery capacity. These features make the new product suitable not only for off-wear detection applications for wearable devices such as wireless headphones and smartwatches, but also for various status detection applications for a wide range of applications.