
It’s projected that there will be 24 billion IoT devices by 2020. Many of these devices are battery-operated, and long battery life is an important design requirement. This is particularly true for IoT devices that are used in the field where it’s difficult to charge a battery. For those devices, battery life expectancy can be up to several years. Hence, maximizing battery life for these IoT devices is absolutely critical.
Watch this webinar to learn how to solve these IoT power consumption measurement challenges.
Keithley has instrumentation with the measurement speed and sensitivity, and the unique sourcing you need to assess and maximize battery life.
Characterizing the load current profile of a prototype device requires measuring the current in all of its operating states: sleep mode (from microamps to milliamps), standby modes (from hundreds of microamps to tens of milliamps), and all active states (from milliamps to amps) including short current bursts due to wireless transmissions. But, capturing these widely varying load current levels accurately demands an exceptional measurement solution that offers:
And, Keithley’s DMM7510 7½-digit Graphical Sampling Multimeter is well-equipped to meet these demands with:
How low can the battery voltage drop before the device turns off? Gauging battery life and assessing how the DUT performs at different stages of battery discharge requires instrumentation that can simulate battery performance accurately. Keithley’s 2281S-20-6 Battery Simulator makes it easy to model any type of battery required, so testing prototype devices can be done efficiently and with high repeatability at any battery state, as well as estimating battery life effectively. Combining a 2281S-20-6 with a DMM7510 provides a complete solution for power consumption/battery life assessment.
The final piece of the puzzle is creating a model for the battery that powers the device. Keithley’s 2450 or 2460 Graphical SourceMeter® Source Measure Unit (SMU) instruments make it so easy to create the model for the battery used by your product. A battery model-generating script operates the SMU instrument as a controlled current load and derives the model parameters.
The DMM7510 delivers a wide current measurement range, picoamp current sensitivity, high speed sampling, and a 27 million reading memory buffer to measure and store a prototype device’s current profile.
Model any type of battery required to test devices efficiently and repeatability at any battery state. Also ideal for estimating battery life effectively is the combinination of a 2281S-20-6 with a DMM7510 to provide a complete solution for power consumption/battery life assessment.
These SMU instruments can operate as a sensitive, electronic load to discharge a battery. In adddition, the SMUs can execute test scripts to monitor battery drain and create a model-generating script that lets them operate as a constant current load and derive the model parameters.