Nordic Semiconductor’s nPM1300 PMIC provides designers with a compact, streamlined power management solution for embedded Bluetooth Low Energy designs, ensuring the low-power benchmarks of wireless SoCs are not compromised by inefficient circuitry. With fewer discrete components and a smaller board footprint, the nPM1300 enables longer battery life and improved battery operation for applications that include wearables, personal medical devices, smart home IoT sensors, and hand-held consumer electronics devices. It is USB-C compatible with an operating temperature from -40°C to 85°C.
Configurable via an I2C-compatible two-wire interface and Nordic’s nPM PowerUP desktop app – with no requirement for coding – the nPM1300 is optimised for maximum efficiency when paired with Nordic’s nRF52 and nRF53 chipsets, as well as the nRF54H20 advanced wireless multiprotocol SoCs. This enables designers to easily access the full functionality of the PMIC, including:
- One- or two-button hard reset
- Fuel gauge
- System-level watchdog
- Failed-boot recovery
- Intelligent power-loss warning
- 5x GPIOs
- 3x LED drivers
The block diagram of the PMIC is shown below:
As illustrated, there are two 200-mA buck DC/DC converters and options for two load switches rated at 100 mA or two LDOs rated at 50 mA. The five GPIOs allow 3.3-V SoCs to easily interface with 5-V systems for increased peripheral flexibility.
The nPM1300 can also be used with Nordic’s nRF91 cellular IoT SiPs for battery charging; in this case, the unregulated output from the PMIC can be used to power the SiP’s internal buck regulators. The 800-mA battery charging circuit can be used with 3.5- to 4.45-V Li-ion, Li-poly, and LiFePO4 batteries.
Though the nPM1300 is designed for use with Nordic chipsets, it can also be used with third-party SoCs, and Nordic are able to provide the binary – not the source code – to do this.
For more detailed specifications, please consult this official product brief.
The nPM1300 evaluation kit grants designers easy access to all the PMIC’s connections via male pin headers that can be used to send signals to external systems, including Nordic’s other development boards. Three onboard LEDs and four push buttons are present for testing the functionality of the LED drivers and GPIOs, as well as JST battery connectors for profiling your batteries using the nPM PowerUP desktop app, which generates a battery model for best state-of-charge accuracy and allows you to export code for your MCU/SoC for easy interfacing with the PMIC; pre-profiled battery models are provided for reference.
Learn more by reading this official product brief for the EVK.
If you would like to evaluate this technology for use in your next commercial project, fill out the form below, and ipXchange will get you started on your nPM1300 journey.
(Images sourced from Nordic Semiconductor)
