Sensor - Use level shifter or not?

Question

I try to design an electronics with a VL53L1CXV0FY/1 ToF sensor. The uC has a logic level of 3.3V and the ToF sensor seems to have different logic levels, but I'm not sure what I should choose.

Operating Conditions according to the datasheet:

The default level seems to be 1.8VDC for IOVDD, that would mean I need a 3.3V, 2.8V and 1.8V LDO, that makes not a lot of sense to me. Now my question would be, what would happen if I directly set IOVDD to 2.8V as it is done for the evaluation board. It seems, that I first need to drive the hardware with the 1.8V and then repogramm it, that is definitely not what I want to do. Also it seems, that the voltage is directly 3.3V compatible (MAX 3.5V), so theoretically I should be able to have only the 3.3V LDO and no level shifter at all, but only when I get a pregrogrammed sensor or do I miss something important here?

Datasheet: https://mouser.com/datasheet/2/389/dm00452094-1799360.pdf

Evaluation Board: https://www.st.com/resource/en/data_brief/vl53l1x-satel.pdf

Nucleo Example: https://eu.mouser.com/datasheet/2/389/x-nucleo-53l1a1-1848808.pdf

Answer 1

I agree it's a confusing. I found a related question on the ST forums.

The way I understand the answer given there is that the I2C interface will still work with 2.8 V when configured for 1.8 V. Its detection threshold for high/low transitions will be a bit too low (eg. 0.9 V instead of 1.4 V), so it will more susceptible to noise, but it will work.

As for running directly on 3.3 V, you might have higher power consumption but otherwise that seems to be allowed by the recommended operating conditions.

If you think this is too close to the maximum, you could consider running the whole bus at 2.8 V or 3.0 V, if the other devices and the master support it.