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For IoT devices, battery life is one of the most crucial factors. It's simple to see why. Customers frequently anticipate extended battery life from the apps and gadgets they use. For example, industrial sensors and smart agriculture require sensors to operate for extended periods—often more than ten years—between charges. Battery failure is not an option for wearable medical equipment like pacemakers, where device life might mean the difference between life and death.
Battery Life Is IoT Device Life
An important factor in customer purchasing decisions is long battery life. Unexpectedly short battery lives in devices can harm a company's reputation, lower sales, or even result in an expensive recall that wipes out the company's financial stability. Batteries are inexpensive, but changing them is not. The cost of replacing batteries frequently exceeds that of the IoT device. Discover the actions you can take right now to optimize battery life in IoT devices by reading this blog.
Four Suggestions For Improving IoT Device Battery Life
Implement effective power efficiency strategies for IoT devices by following four key tips to optimize battery life, ensuring prolonged and reliable device performance.
Test Devices Correctly In The Lab
Chipset designers must create integrated circuits (ICs) with deep sleep modes that use very little electricity to meet today's demands for extended battery lives. The devices must have low battery voltages, low current consumption, numerous clock-speed working modes, and reduced instruction sets.
To ensure the Internet of Things device will function as intended in the intended operating environment, extensive design and testing are conducted at every level of the development process. Using a variety of measurement tools and software, success begins in the lab.
- Measure Current With Sufficient Dynamic Range And Precision
IoT devices often only occasionally activate to send or receive data, spending most of their time in standby or sleep mode to maximize battery life. An Internet of Things device can use hundreds of milliamperes in active mode. Still, it will only use microamperes or nanoamperes in sleep mode.
It is essential to carefully characterize the dynamic current consumption of your equipment to avoid needless current drains. Accurately measuring low currents and swiftly transitioning to high current readings are essential skills. When measured correctly, the current drain offers a window into more detailed information that can help you maximize the amount of time your battery lasts.
Recommendation: To prevent mistakes brought on by range changes, use a measuring device with dual ranges or seamless ranging. Verify that it can withstand a 1,000,000:1 ratio between the minimum and maximum current levels and measure correctly over a broad dynamic range.
- Test Using Enough Bandwidth To Prevent Missing Quick Digital Events
Your current waveform's area under the curve represents how much battery you use. Equipment with an inadequate measurement bandwidth will significantly deteriorate your present measurements.
High narrow current spikes and brief transient effects happen when an Internet of Things device turns on and off frequently to save power. Your test apparatus might miss these quick (transient) events, which momentarily draw an ampere or more if it doesn't have enough capacity. A single mishandled test or overlooked temporary issue could lead to an early device failure.
Recommendation: To achieve accurate current consumption characterization and to properly capture transient current waveforms, use an instrument capable of doing quick measurements constantly.
- Consider The Effect Of Your Firmware Choices And Updates
Both firmware and hardware design have a role in long battery life. Firmware programmers need the right tools to assess the consequences of their programming choices. Battery life can suffer if these choices are not fully understood.
Recommendation: Use software that tells you how frequently your device runs at different current levels. Use a program that can split up your present waveform into individual segments and show comprehensive data for each one, including the amount of charge used. Finally, to start and stop measurements based on events within your device, consider employing measurement equipment with digital I/O lines.
- Correlate Charge Consumption With RF Events
Optimizing an Internet of Things device's battery life requires understanding how it uses its charge when running in real-world scenarios. Determining which subsystems or events to optimize is simpler when the device's current consumption is linked to a particular RF event.
Recommendation: Do event-based power analysis using a measurement tool and software that enables you to record RF and sub-circuit events from your Internet of Things device. Next, synchronize the recorded events with the current waveform on the device. This procedure lets you quickly determine which subsystems or events must be optimized to increase your device's battery life.
Consider Interactions With Other Devices
Cochannel and neighboring channel interference can happen when wireless technologies share comparable frequency bands, leading to unsuccessful transmissions and lost network connections. As a result, the Internet of Things device keeps trying to retransmit data or rejoin the network, which can significantly deplete a device's battery.
The greatest defense against this scenario is to consider how your gadget will communicate with other devices in its surroundings and build it with spectrum sharing in mind to prevent repetitive transmissions and collisions. Implementing battery life enhancement strategies for IoT devices ensures not only efficient communication but also maximizes the longevity of your device's battery, promoting sustained performance in diverse wireless environments.
- Comply With Relevant Standards
Your product design is impacted by the standards created by numerous regulatory and standards organizations. Some even claim to provide extended battery life. Breaking these standards puts end users at greater risk, which could harm your company's reputation and increase expenses in the event of recalls or fines.
Recommendation: Choose standards that are intended to prolong battery life. Check that your design complies with any industry standards that were used.
- Don't Infringe On Your Neighbor's Bandwidth
IoT devices frequently operate over the same frequency but employ various wireless communications protocols. Battery life may be significantly impacted by multi-radio interference. An IoT device's ability to transmit a signal demands more power in situations with a lot of interference, which lowers its transmission efficiency and shortens its battery life.
Recommendation: Take the following actions to make sure rivals using a lot of spectrum won't jeopardize your device's performance:
- Adhere to FCC regulations
- Please make sure the transmission frequency accuracy of your equipment is as precise as it can be.
- Steer clear of too-strong transmissions
- Ensure your device only sends out data when it contains something of value.
- Perform Cybersecurity Testing
People are often reluctant to adopt the Internet of Things due to security concerns. Since many people don't change the default passwords on their devices, hackers can exploit this weakness to launch cyberattacks. Security flaws can also be produced via interference. Interference can overwhelm an IoT device, sending it into fault states where it becomes momentarily open to hackers.
Hacking increases the battery's unanticipated burden. Hackers can purposefully destroy IoT setups by depleting the sensor batteries.
Recommendation: Test security measures thoroughly to make sure your IoT is impenetrable. Customers, your business, and the IoT ecosystem gain from having your device's security tested.
Also Read: Is IoT the Future of Web Development? Costing Billions in Market Impact!
- Stress Test Your IoT Device
When you bring your design outside the lab and into the real world, you want to avoid unexpected behavior. There is no amount of testing in a perfect lab setting that can get you ready for the unexpected pressures of a busy, real-world setting. Every stressor can drastically deplete your gadget's battery.
By stress testing its application functionalities, you can ascertain your IoT device's actual field capabilities and weak areas. You can make the required adjustments to assist you in better optimizing the battery life of your device whenever any possible problems are identified.
- Test Under Extreme Environmental Conditions
The effects of humidity and temperature on battery life vary. Heat rapidly depletes a battery. The battery's service life may drastically decrease if it is frequently discharged, stressing the battery.
Recommendation: Measure power usage accurately during operation and during transportation and storage, considering variations in temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors.
- Test Coexistence With Other Wireless Standards
Several wireless applications and standards use the same frequency bands. High-density device deployments, standards-based traffic, and extensive usage of unlicensed or shared spectrum can all result in inevitable interference that shortens battery life.
Recommendation: Run coexistence testing to ensure your IoT gadget is reliable and will function constantly with predictable battery life.
- Test Modules In Actual User Environments
User actions influence battery life. Contrary to popular belief, real consumers frequently use IoT devices in unexpected ways. Your device's battery may run out more quickly if unexpected behavior occurs. Real-world testing is necessary to determine how technology will function in the hands of actual users, but it may be costly and time-consuming.
Recommendation: Instead of spending a lot of money on field testing, use a measuring method that accurately replicates difficult electromagnetic (EM) settings to assist in demonstrating device operation rapidly. Test using actual user profiles corresponding to your device's use.
- Test In Difficult Electromagnetic Environments
An IoT gadget that works perfectly on your bench may malfunction in the field due to a congested EM environment, among other reasons, when many users are jammed onto a limited licensed frequency band, adjacent and cochannel interference results. Several interferers lead to reduced gearbox efficiency and lower battery life.
Recommendation: Check for rejection of interference from neighboring and co channel sources. Test for immunity against intentional and unintentional interferences, such as electromagnetic fields generated by heavy machinery and even everyday items like microwave ovens.
Optimize MCU Power Consumption
You must select an energy-efficient microcontroller unit (MCU) as a device designer. You should correctly configure and program the MCU, test your design, and optimize your device's battery life.
Choose Your MCU Options Wisely
Every MCU has options. Your choices greatly influence your device's current consumption.
Recommendation: Select solutions that reduce the amount of current consumed:
- Extend the duration of low-power sleep modes on your device.
- Select memory technology that minimizes battery power use while maintaining appropriate application performance. • Disable power to unneeded RAM wherever practical.
- To provide you with multiple options for adjusting battery drain, choose an MCU with varying speeds and kinds of timers and clocks.
Consider The Device And Peripheral Architecture
Power consumption is influenced by the MCU hardware architecture and peripherals you choose. By making wise decisions, you can maximize the battery life of your Internet of Things device.
Recommendation: Choose the peripherals and MCU architecture that best suit your application's requirements. One way to save power consumption is with an MCU that can run at different voltages. Certain high-speed peripherals, such as math accelerators, allow you to minimize current draw by accelerating the MCU's sleep phase and lowering its power consumption when doing particular activities.
Write Firmware To Optimize MCU Clock Speed
Writing software that maximizes MCU clock speed should be your first step in the firmware design process. Since MCU current consumption is commonly expressed in µA/MHz, a processor with a slower clock speed uses less current than one with a faster clock speed. A slow MCU clock saves current for code parts where the CPU is mostly idle.
Recommendation: Create a program that minimizes clock cycles when operating IoT devices and puts the MCU to sleep as soon as feasible. Make sure that sensors and other peripherals are turned on only when necessary. Don't forget to account for the stabilization time of the sensor's power-on to prevent imprecise measurements.
Standard best practices such as unrolling tiny loops, minimizing needless variables, declaring variables to be volatile only when necessary, and setting constants outside loops can also help you maximize MCU clock speed. Optimize the radio's retry strategy and change the frequency at which the MCU activates the device's radio to broadcast data.
Automated Current Profiles Are Your Friend
Firmware provides a plethora of programming possibilities and adjustment settings. Determining whether your adjustment boosts or decreases current usage with all those options is challenging.
Recommendation: To better understand the effects of a modification, run a current profile both before and after the change. It is best to choose a tool with a wide dynamic range that can manage a 1,000,000:1 ratio between minimum and maximum current levels and that includes both sleep and active modes in the profile.
Conclusion
For gadget makers, achieving optimal battery life is a crucial benefit that gives them a distinct and marketable position. Success requires the application of many strategies, as this blog discusses in depth. Testing and design that work well are essential throughout the development process.
Early data collection and analysis on battery performance reduce the need for expensive post-purchase repair. Effective testing not only provides valuable insights but also enhances the possibilities of discovering innovative solutions for improving and extending the battery life of your IoT devices through specialized battery life improvement services.
