
ADMP441
Data Sheet
Rev. B | Page 8 of 16
THEORY OF OPERATION
T
he ADMP441 is a high performance, low power, digital
output, omnidirectional MEMS microphone with a bottom
port. The complet
e ADMP441 solution consists of a MEMS
sensor, signal conditioning, an analog-to-digital converter, anti-
aliasing filters, power management, and an industry standard
24-bit IS interface.
T
he ADMP441 complies with the TIA-920 Telecommunications
Telephone Terminal Equipment Transmission Requirements for
Wideband Digital Wireline Telephones standard.
UNDERSTANDING SENSITIVITY
The casual user of digital microphones may have difficulty
understanding the sensitivity specification. Unlike an analog
microphone (whose specification is easily confirmed with an
oscilloscope), the digital microphone output has no obvious
unit of measure.
T
he ADMP441 has a nominal sensitivity of 26 dBFS at 1 kHz
with an applied sound pressure level of 94 dB. The units are in
decibels referred to full scale. The
ADMP441 default full-scale
peak output word is 223 – 1 (integer representation), and
26 dBFS of that scale is (223 1) × 10(26/20) = 420,426. A pure
acoustic tone at 1 kHz having a 1 Pa rms amplitude results in an
output digital signal whose peak amplitude is 420,426.
Although the industry uses a standard specification of 94 dB
SPL, the
ADMP441 test method applies a 104 dB SPL signal.
The higher sound pressure level reduces noise and improves
repeatability. T
he ADMP441 has excellent gain linearity, and
the sensitivity test result at 94 dB is derived with very high
confidence from the test data.
POWER MANAGEMENT
T
he ADMP441 has three different power states: normal
operation, standby mode, and power-down mode.
Normal Operation
The microphone becomes operational 218 clock cycles (85 ms
with SCK at 3.072 MHz) after initial power-up. The CHIPEN
pin then controls the power modes. The part is in normal opera-
tion mode when SCK is active and the CHIPEN pin is high.
Standby Mode
The microphone enters standby mode when the serial data
clock SCK stops and CHIPEN is high. Normal operation
resumes 214 clock cycles (5 ms with SCK at 3.072 MHz) after
SCK restarts.
T
he ADMP441 should not be transitioned from standby to
power-down mode, or vice versa. Standby mode is only
intended to be entered from the normal operation state.
Power-Down Mode
The microphone enters power-down mode when CHIPEN is
low, regardless of the SCK operation. Normal mode operation
resumes 217 SCK clock cycles (43 ms with SCK at 3.072 MHz)
after CHIPEN returns high while SCK is active.
It always takes 217 clock cycles to restart the ADMP441 after VDD is applied.
It is not recommended to supply active clocks (WS and SCK) to
the ADMP441 while there is no power supplied to VDD. Doing this continuously turns on ESD protection diodes, which may
affect long-term reliability of the microphone.
STARTUP
The microphones have zero output for the first 218 SCK clock
cycles (85 ms with SCK at 3.072 MHz) following power-up.
IS DATA INTERFACE
The slave serial data port’s format is IS, 24-bit, twos comple-
ment. There must be 64 SCK cycles in each WS stereo frame, or
32 SCK cycles per data-word. The L/R control pin determines
whether t
he ADMP441 outputs data in the left or right channel.
For a stereo application, the SD pins of the left and right
ADMP441 microphones should be tied together as shown in
Figure 9. The format of a stereo IS data stream is shown in
microphone data stream for left and right microphones,
respectively.
Data Output Mode
The output data pin (SD) is tristated when it is not actively
driving IS output data. SD immediately tristates after the LSB
is output so that another microphone can drive the common
data line.
The SD trace should have a pull-down resistor to discharge the
line during the time that all microphones on the bus have
tristated their outputs. A 100 kΩ resistor is sufficient for this, as
Data-Word Length
The output data-word length is 24 bits per channel. The
ADMP441 must always have 64 clock cycles for every stereo
data-word (fSCK = 64 × fWS).
Data-Word Format
The default data format is IS (twos complement), MSB-first. In
this format, the MSB of each word is delayed by one SCK cycle
from the start of each half-frame.
OBSOLETE