Extended battery life is a common design requirement across a variety of applications. Whether it’s for toys or water meters, designers have various techniques at their disposal to improve battery life. In this post, I will illustrate one such technique that involves strategically bypassing a low dropout linear regulator (LDO).
Generating the rail
Using an LDO is a common…
Linear regulator, boost (step-up) or buck (step-down) – these are the three power-supply topologies for most smart locks. Which do you choose for your designs? Why does it matter?
The success of any Internet of Things (IoT) device hinges on its ease of use. Primarily, ease of use means the ease of connecting to and controlling the device. But it also refers to the low maintenance of that connected device. How often…
With portable products packed with new features and an embedded lithium-ion battery inside, one key design consideration is how to optimize the end-user experience with fast and cool charging. Most higher-current (>1A) portable electronics have adopted a high-efficiency synchronous-switching battery charger with integrated MOSFETs. These chargers provide an efficient charging…
Battery packs are used in the products that we depend on daily. Many of our portable devices such as our cell phones, our watches and our tablet computers are constantly at our sides and running on batteries. Consequently, their batteries discharge throughout the day and we have to recharge them every one to two days. We assume that the gauges in these products are accurate and will…
Don’t let your battery drain on the shelf – use ship mode
You’ve done it; your battery-powered design is complete: a new wearable for the consumer electronics market. You’re excited, and you want your consumers to feel that same excitement when they open the box and turn the device on. But how do you make sure that happens? A Christmas present bought in advance can be sitting in wrapping paper for four…
A battery gauge is essential in most modern systems to help determine how much power a given system can draw from the battery pack. Whether batteries are the system’s primary or backup power source, in most systems reliably operate on. In most cases, it is not very straightforward to estimate the amount of capacity in battery packs. Depending on the system, there are…
Lithium ion (Li-Ion) or lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries are key components in some portable systems, especially power banks. But on rare occasions, these batteries have the potential risk of catching on fire or even exploding in short-circuit, overvoltage or high-temperature conditions. An increasing number of such incidences are occurring even today.
To help safeguard consumers against these conditions, Underwriters…
Step-by-step calculation of gauging accuracy and other factors affecting accuracy
In part 1 of this series, I discussed the difference between measurement accuracy and gauging accuracy. I highlighted that gauging accuracy depends on the accuracy of input variables (voltage, current and temperature) into your chosen algorithm, as well as the algorithm’s robustness, or the ability…
Did you know, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a web page from the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response to address zombie preparedness. They claim that it is tongue in cheek, but we all know better.
Here’s a horrifying thought, what happens when things go south and the zombies start roaming? How will I keep my personal electronics (phone, tablet, watch and others) charged? What if…
bq77905 3S to 5S Advanced Stackable Low Power Battery Protector EVM
When it comes to any type of protection, the solution should be simple. Protection should be something that you design and set up once and don’t have to worry about again; at least that’s how it should be. But when it comes to more and better battery protection, designers may worry about what this might cost them…
In a Power Systems Design article, “Active and passive balancing for battery management systems (North America > December 2015 > Page 21),” Stefano Zanella described how a multicell system becomes unbalanced. In this post, I would like to explore how batteries become unusable if they’re not balanced and expand a bit on the effects of battery-capacity mismatch. I will focus on automotive lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries…
Part 1: Measurement and gauging accuracy
A battery gauge, commonly called a gas or fuel gauge, obtains data from the battery to determine how much juice is left in it. Gauging accuracy should not be misconstrued for measurement accuracy of a gauge. The ability of a gauge to accurately report the state of charge and predict the remaining battery capacity depends on various measurements…
In my previous blog “Selecting the right battery charger for industrial applications”, we discussed the standalone vs. host controlled chargers and external vs integrated switching FETs. Now let’s take a look at different charging topologies.
First of all, we have to better understand the battery charger features, Dynamic Power Management (DPM) and Dynamic Power Path Management (DPPM). These two features…
A key design challenge when designing a power bank is passing the electromagnetic interference (EMI) test. Electronics engineers often fear EMI test failures, and it would be a nightmare if the circuit failed the EMI test again and again. You would have to work day and night in the lab to fix the problem to avoid product launch delays. For consumer products like power banks, the design period is short, while the EMI…
Want to learn more about wireless power? Bring your questions to our expert panel as IEEE, TI and the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) team up to host a free live Q&A on the IEEE Power Electronics Society LinkedIn Group. Request to join the group here ahead of time and tune in on August 30, 2016 from 9:00-10:00 a.m. CT to chat about what wireless power looks like today and how it’s being adopted in emerging sectors…
Where did my charger go? My laptop is running low on battery again as I’m typing this. We are constantly struggling with battery life in today’s always-on connected world. Everything we use needs a longer battery life, but also needs a smaller battery. Impossible you say? Certainly not, but this trend of shrinking form factor while extending battery life poses a serious challenge for many of today’s circuit…
Power banks are becoming more and more popular as battery capacity outstrips the runtime of personal electronic devices like smartphones and tablets. High-performance CPUs, large sizes and high-resolution display panels also make runtimes shorter. This creates an demand for a fast-charging backup battery such as a power banks.
Traditionally, a 5V USB is the standard power supply for mobile devices like smartphones and…
Today, system designers need to be much savvier about power management. Because of the ever-increasing number of functions and applications, there are greater demands on battery capacity. Users also demand shorter charge time, which requires faster charge currents.
A single charger may not be able to support the high charge current needed, however, because of the thermal limitations in semiconductor packages. Nobody…
Industrial application designers are just beginning to see the value of wireless power for their systems. Consider an electronic point-of-sale (ePOS) terminal. The flexibility of not being tethered to a system (by cables or wires) and not having to worry about corrosion on the charge leads opens up a lot of possibilities for improved customer satisfaction, as speed and accuracy are key. Just think of all the places you…
Designing a power supply to charge the battery for applications like portable audio or wearable fitness gadgets can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Now, you can fast-charge your selection and design process using the new WEBENCH Battery Charger Designer tool.
In addition to selecting the appropriate feature-rich linear or switch-mode battery charger integrated circuit (IC) for your application, the tool also…
When you are designing a circuit to charge a Lithium-ion battery, what is the right value of over-voltage tolerance for the charger or front-end power-input device?
The answer (as usual) is, “it depends.” What is your normal direct current (DC) input to the charging circuit? Are you using a regulated or unregulated power source? Do you have a long cable to connect from your power source to the battery-operated…
We use more and more portable devices in our daily lives, from consumer electronics to industrial equipment. Looking at battery configuration and charging requirements in more detail, you’ll find major differences between consumer electronics and industrial equipment.
In industrial applications such as drones and robots, batteries configured with high cell counts (more than two battery cells in series achieve…
Battery gas gauges using Impedance TrackTM technology use a blend of coulomb counting and voltage based algorithms to provide the most accurate state of charge indication for a wide variety of secondary batteries available today.
One thing we have noticed in the Battery Management Gas Gauge forum is that sometimes it is hard to know where to start when designing a fuel gauge into…
Imagine for a second how useful (or useless) your car would be without a gas gauge. Not very appealing, is it? The same principle applies to battery-powered systems. Including a gas gauge in a battery-powered system provides accurate capacity information and helps extend the runtime of the application.
TI provides multiple solutions for single- and multi-cell applications, with gauging algorithms such as Impedance Track…
With smartphones and tablets growing in size every year, their battery capacities must also grow. Increasing the battery’s milliamp-hour (mAh) capacity provides the same or increased operating time at its operating power, which also increases with additional functionality and larger display sizes. If charged at the same rate as smaller-capacity batteries, these…
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