Theory of Operation
Block Diagram
The diagram below shows how sensor control helps analog sensor top integration into the overall design.
Recoverable and Fatal Alerts
The analog sensor top sends alert requests in independent, differential form to the sensor control.
Each alert request consists of a pair of signals, one active high and one active low.
The active polarity of each signal is independent, due to the imprecise sensor timing that drives the alert.
This means that the sensor control recognizes an active alert as long as one of the lines is active, and not the pair of signals being in a particular state.
Each signal in the differential pair is thus a separate dedicated alert indicator.
Once an alert request is detected as active, the sensor control formulates a proper alert event through the prim_alert_sender and sends a notification to the alert handler.
The sensor control can optionally generate alert acknowledgements back to the analog sensor top.
For each incoming alert, it can be programmed as fatal or recoverable through FATAL_ALERT_EN.
If set to recoverable, an alert will be registered in RECOV_ALERT and the original analog sensor top event acknowledged.
The acknowledgement prevents alerts from constantly being sent.
If set to fatal, an alert will be registered in FATAL_ALERT but the original analog sensor top event will not be acknowledged.
This causes the alert to constantly send until the system escalates in some form.
Wakeup Requests
In addition to forwarding events to the alert handler, incoming events can also be aggregated into a wakeup request to the system.
The sensor control does not make assumptions about its power domains and thus it is up to the integrating system to decide which power modes allow alert event wakeups.
As an example, if the sensor control is not placed in an always on domain, then it cannot send alert based wakeups if the system is in a deep low power state.
It will only be able to send wakeups when the system is powered and the clk_aon_i input is available.