Performance vs. power dissipation; it’s one of the most delicate trade-offs for those who are developing smart sensors for the emerging IoT-based application space. Within the broad space of performance, noise is often an important attribute to evaluate, as it can constrain component selection for key functional blocks in a smart sensor, which in turn can increase the power burden. In addition, noise behaviors can drive filtering requirements, which can influence the sensor’s responsiveness to rapid changes in conditions and extend the time it takes to develop a quality measurement.
In applications that support continuous observation (sampling, processing, communication), system architects often have to work through an adversarial relationship between noise and power, as the lowest noise solutions are rarely the ones that also offer the lowest power (within a particular functional class of devices). For example, MEMS accelerometers commonly serve as a core sensor in remote tilt measurement systems. Table 1 captures the highlights from two different products that offer industry- leading performance in either noise or power at this time: ADXL355 (low noise) and ADXL362 (low power).