Low-power Embedded Supply System: Li-ion Battery with Gas-Gauge Case Study

摘要

Power management is one of the key aspects to consider in low-power embedded systems design. It is a delicate art of minimizing system’s power consumption while maintaining its required functionalities. Well-tuned power management becomes even more crucial in systems without any possibility of energy harvesting, which rely only on battery power supply.This contribution addresses the above issue by studying a low-power system’s battery voltage level and capacity profiles in various operating modes, and lists the arrangements having the most significant impact on extension of system’s operating time. The applied methods and configurations were tested on an embedded Li-ion battery-powered system featuring a microcontroller Freescale FRDM-KL25Z and a “gas gauge” battery monitoring circuit LTC 2941.