SensorDynamics

SensorDynamics was founded in 2003 by Herbert Gartner, Hubertus Christ, Jürgen Tittel and Volker Kempe. Financed by national and international Venture Capital investors the company successfully closed four equity rounds in 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2011. In 2005 SensorDynamics was ranked under the top 100 European high tech companies by Tornado Insider and awarded the Fast Forward Award 2005 in Austria. From the beginning the Company strongly cooperated with the Institute of Silicon Technology Fraunhofer Society in Itzehoe and expanded this cooperation with long-term agreements in 2007. In October 2007 SensorDynamics started a deep cooperation with US consumer electronics supplier Kionix Archived 2009-02-25 at the Wayback Machine. In August 2008 EnOcean and SensorDynamics announced the launch world's first energy harvesting system on chip SOC product. In March 2009 SensorDynamics launched MEMS gyroscopes for industrial, medical and consumer applications. In November 2009 Chipworks selected SensorDynamics' MEMS product SD755 as product of the year 2009. In November 2010 SensorDynamics announced XY angular rate and an XYZ angular rate devices in 6x6x1.8 mm3 QFN40-packages. In December 2010 SensorDynamics announced worldwide's first fully characterized and specified 6 x 6 x 1.2 mm 6DoF IMU (six degrees of freedom inertial measurement unit) including evaluation boards. In July 2011 SensorDynamics was acquired by Maxim Integrated, a recognized leader in analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products. Maxim Integrated, headquartered in San Jose, California, is in Fortune 1000, and is included in the NASDAQ-100, the Russell 1000, and MSCI USA indices. Maxim was paying $164 million to acquire SensorDynamics.

SensorDynamics focused on three product groups, for each of which the company had created a development platform to guarantee a maximum re-use of silicon proven analogue and digital IPs. This was the basis for both application-specific developments and adaptations of existing products.

Inertial microsensor systems

SensorDynamics had developed and produced world's first MEMS combo sensors in combining MEMS motion sensors (angular rate and/or acceleration) with sophisticated analogue-digital electronics (ASIC) in micro packages to form a large-scale of integrated micro sensor system.

Applications included electronic stabilization systems, rollover detection and navigation sets for ’blind reckoning’ without GPS support.

Intelligent sensor interface circuits

SensorDynamics had a wealth of expertise in the development and manufacturing of intelligent electronic signal conditioning circuitry of macro sensors such as core and planar coils, resistors, capacitive and magneto resistive sensors. Cooperation with the customer produces application-specific sensor systems that combined macro sensors and electronic signal conditioning at module level.