Check and Control IoT Power Consumption | Electronic Design
Installation of billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in homes, factories, and offices worldwide indicate the growing popularity of this extremely practical technology. It provides the means by which wireless transceivers connect many different sensors to the internet for remote control of other electronic equipment. For example, it allows you to connect to a heater or air conditioner to adjust the temperature of a family room, using a cellphone as a controller from some distance.
Often these IoT sensors are “set and forget” devices intended to run for long times on small batteries at low voltages and currents. Of course, lasting a long time on one battery or a single set of miniature batteries is a sign of an IoT device with low power consumption.
Certainly, this should be part of every IoT device intended for remote sensing and control. It can be established at the IoT product design stage through careful planning, and with the assistance of measurement strategies that can reveal a design’s power-consumption characteristics. This requires a set of measurements that accurately characterizes an IoT device’s power consumption under its different operating modes, and the type of test equipment that can replicate the IoT device’s actual operating conditions at extremely low levels of voltage and current.