Both consumers and manufacturers are demanding products have longer battery lifetimes for many reasons including increasing time between battery changes, saving money on battery replacement, and passing tougher energy regulations. Silicon Labs’ C8051F9xx provides longer battery lifetime by focusing on reducing power consumption in all modes of operation. The C8051F9xx’s low power ADC with burst mode can take analog measurements while the CPU is off, further saving energy. Lastly, in addition to consuming low current per MHz, a common industry specification, the C8051F9xx is unique in that it employs an integrated low drop-out regulator (LDO) to keep the current constant at 160µA/MHz in the operating range of 1.8 - 3.6V. The graph at the bottom of this page shows the average battery lifetime of a typical sensor application versus time. It uses a typical sensor application operating model of waking up every ½ second, using the ADC to capture the sensor’s output, performing a series of calculations and going back to sleep. As can be seen from the graph, the C851F912 increases battery lifetime by two to three times versus its closest competitors. This translates into a >50% reduction in battery costs and reduced consumer hassle.