ams Launches Extended Range dToF Module

Businesswire: ams announces the world’s smallest integrated module for direct ToF distance measurement in range from 2cm up to 2.5m. The TMF8801 is said to be more than 30% smaller than competing ToF sensors yet offers good accuracy and usability in the presence of sunlight. Competing ToF sensors struggle to accurately measure distance below dirty or smudged cover glass whereas the TMF8801 maintains high accuracy through use of its on-chip histogram processing.

“The new TMF8801 direct ToF sensor which complements the TMF8701 short range ToF sensor released in 2018, provides extended distance range sensing for smartphones,” says Dave Moon, Senior Product Marketing Manager in the Integrated Optical Sensors business line at ams. “The TMF8801 is ideally suited to provide support for improving world-facing mobile phone camera performance using laser detection auto-focus (LDAF), enabling mobile phone users to take pin-sharp photos and selfies.”

With an integrated 940nm VCSEL, multiple SPADs, time-to-digital converter, and on-chip microcontroller for processing histograms, the TMF8801 delivers superior ToF performance. Compared to distance averaging employed with an indirect ToF system, the direct ToF time measurement methodology used in the TMF8801 is said to deliver higher accuracy distance measurements. When used to support LDAF, high accuracy distance measurements deliver improved camera performance.

The small size and low power consumption of the TMF8801 is suitable for collision avoidance detection used in autonomous vacuum cleaners, and industrial robotics. For display-based products such as mobile computing, the TMF8801 can be used for user presence detection to automatically wake up or put the system into a low-power sleep mode based on the presence or absence of a user.

The TMF8801 is housed in a 2.2mm x 3.6mm x 1.0mm package and is in volume production. Unit pricing is $2.89 in order quantities of 5,000 pieces.

The previous generation TMF8701 sensor has a shorter range up to 60cm in a similarly sized package. It has won an number of awards.