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In the last decade, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) have been widely used in electronic products. It started with life-saving components (airbag sensors, tire pressure monitoring systems) in the automotive industry, but has recently been adopted by many consumer electronics devices such as smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, gaming systems and more. Components used in these systems include sensors, gyroscopes, and microphones.
Over the past five years, MEMS oscillators have replaced crystal oscillators in electronic applications. MEMS oscillators accelerate adoption as they offer greater functionality, higher performance, faster availability, higher endurance and reliability, and lower cost benefits.
The advent of MEMS oscillators in electronic devices began with consumer electronics and computing devices such as laptops, DVRs, set-top boxes and digital cameras. With the recent introduction of high-performance devices such as the SiTime Encore platform, MEMS oscillators have penetrated into high-performance applications such as:
- Communication Infrastructure – SONET and Ethernet-based synchronous backbone routers and optical network systems require highly stable devices such as MEMS TCXO (Temperature Compensated Oscillators) for high performance applications.
- RAID systems based on SATA, SAS and FibreChannel protocols, and high-performance storage applications such as SAN (Storage Area Networks) also recently used differential MEMS oscillators to replace high-frequency SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) quartz oscillators. .
- Wireless applications such as mobile phone base stations and signal amplifiers use not only very low phase noise but also differential oscillators and single-ended MEMS oscillators which require very high endurance and reliability. MEMS Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCXO) provide the combined potential and level of fine-tuning required for clock signal synchronization and are also used in these applications.
Advantages of MEMS oscillators
- Programmable at all signal levels, supports various products and applications including LVPECL, LVDS, CML, HCSL, LVCMOS
- Programmable at all frequencies within the operating range for optimized performance and flexibility.
- Provides 3-5 week production lead times, better inventory management and management, flexibility to adapt to uptrends, and a simplified supply chain.
- Programmable to standard operating voltages such as 1.8V, 2.5V, 2.8V, 3.3V for connecting to various SOC and ASSP.
- Extend the life of electrical appliances by ensuring frequency stability as low as 10PPM for better system time margins and reliability. It also has better stability and is more immune to low-frequency environmental disturbance generated by power lines, fluorescent lamps, and transformers.
Durability and reliability with a 50,000G impact resistance, 70G vibration resistance and a mean time between failures of 500 million hours are 10 times better than quartz.
