onsemi has published a demonstration of its high-performance analog-front-end (AFE) portfolio, walking through parts aimed at automotive safety sensing and wearable medical devices such as continuous glucose monitors.

The company positions the portfolio around a simple premise: digital systems, including AI-driven edge computing platforms, still depend on analog circuitry to capture sensor data from the physical world. The demonstrations, presented by Alessandro Maggioni, onsemi's Director of Regional Marketing for Broad Market & Industrial in EMEA, include a heartbeat monitor and a vision-system lens-cleaning ultrasound solution.

Automotive signal conditioning: NCV7192

The NCV7192 signal-conditioning interface targets automotive safety applications. The device receives differential signals from an external sensing element, then conditions gain and offset through a configurable amplification stage. It also compensates for sensor nonlinearity and temperature dependency before delivering the result as either a digital SENT output or a ratiometric analog output signal.

For functional safety, the NCV7192 integrates on-chip failure diagnostics and internal protections against shorts, overvoltage, and reverse voltage — protections that reduce the external component count a safety-critical sensor module needs.

Wearable medical sensing: CEM102

The CEM102 AFE addresses a different measurement problem: sensing very low currents. onsemi developed the part specifically for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and other amperometric measurement applications. Because CGM devices run on small batteries and must fit in compact wearable form factors, the AFE's low-current sensing capability translates directly into longer battery life and further miniaturization for end products.

The CEM102 is designed to pair with onsemi's RSL15, a secure Bluetooth 5.2 wireless MCU. The company says the combination brings system-level benefits, including operation at optimized system power consumption and supply voltage — a meaningful claim in a CGM market where replacement cycles are dictated largely by battery life.

Why AFEs anchor edge systems

The demo underscores a structural point about edge AI hardware: the bottleneck for many applications is not compute but input. Heartbeat monitors, glucose sensors, and automotive safety elements all begin with analog signals that must be conditioned, compensated, and digitized before any inference takes place. Sensor nonlinearity and temperature drift, in particular, determine measurement accuracy long before software enters the chain.

onsemi's pairing of application-specific AFEs with its own wireless MCU also signals a broader industry pattern: analog vendors increasingly sell complete sensing signal chains rather than discrete amplifiers, capturing more of the bill of materials in medical wearables and automotive sensor modules.

The demonstrations suggest onsemi intends to keep expanding its AFE portfolio around power- and size-constrained applications, where integrated signal conditioning and battery life set the competitive bar.