The ISL29038 is a low power Ambient Light Sensor (ALS) and
proximity (PROX) sensor. It has a built-in IR-LED driver for
proximity function. The ALS function measures the amount of
light (in the visible spectrum) incident on the ISL29038.
The ALS function has a programmable ambient IR-rejection,
which allows fine tuning of light source variations and is ideal
for light sensor applications under dark protective glass. The
ALS provides a 12-bit measurement. A passive optical filter
removes unwanted wavelengths (IR or Ultraviolet) to ensure
accurate ALS measurement.
The proximity function includes a new offset adjustment to
compensate for the IR light reflected off the inside of the
protective glass cover and back to the ISL29038 sensor. This
offset adjustment allows the sensor to compensate for these
internal reflections and preserve the dynamic range of the
proximity measurement.
The built-in current-driver pulses an external infrared LED at a
programmed current for 90µs. The infrared light that is
reflected and received by ISL29038 is digitized by an 8-bit
ADC. The proximity sensor also has a passive optical filter
designed to pass IR and reject visible wavelengths.
The ISL29038 provides a hardware pin to indicate an interrupt
event. The interrupt pin saves power as the host microcontroller
can ‘wake-up’ on an interrupt event and does not need to poll
the device for an interrupt event. The interrupt generator is
user configurable and provides several options for ALS and
PROX trigger configurations. The ISL29038 supports an
SMBus compatible I2C interface for configuration and control.

Features
• Ideal for applications under dark or tinted glass
• Enhanced ambient sunlight rejection to 40k Lux
• Programmable proximity sleep time between proximity
measurements optimizes power consumption
• Hardware interrupt - no polling required
• Programmable IR compensation to fine tune ALS
performance for various glass compositions
• Up to 4000 Lux, four selectable ALS ranges
• Programmable IR LED drive current to 250mA
• Operates from 2.25V to 3.63V VDD
• Power-down IDD, typical 0.2µADC
• Tiny 2.1x2.0x0.7 (mm) ODFN package

Applications
• Display dimming and adjustment
- Mobile devices: smart phones, PDA, GPS
- Computing: monitors, laptops, notebooks
- Picture frames, tablet_PCs, LCD_TV
• Object detection
- Touchscreen disabling
- Smart power-saving