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The rise in popularity of portable,
battery-powered applications over
the years has pushed designers to
add more features into smaller form
factors. This increase in functions,
particularly wireless communication,
puts a bigger demand on the system
power source. The challenge becomes
how to implement the desired system
functions while extending the battery
life. With the help of the most
recent advances in microcontroller
functionality,
including
various
integrated features and peripherals,
power management in embedded
designs has become smarter and easier
to implement. These MCUs have also
enabled better design techniques.
Do More With Less Power
In case you haven’t noticed, it seems
that everything around us is getting
smarter and connected to one thing or
another. Your shoes now have sensors
that can tell you how to improve your
running time by displaying your pace
on your smart phone. Your scale can
automatically save your weight to
your cloud–based tracking application,
and it can let you know why that last
doughnut you ate was a bad idea - via
an alert on your smart phone. Your
home security system can inform you
about a leak in your garage via text
message, thanks to a small wireless
sensor placed next to the water heater.
The rise in popularity of portable
battery-powered applications has
increased exponentially, thanks to
the technological advances over time.
Engineers are constantly being pushed
to increase product functionality while
reducing its overall dimensions, for each
successive design. These additional
features put a bigger demand on the
system power source. The challenge
becomes how to implement these new
functions while extending the battery
life, all in a smaller footprint.
The conventional approach for battery-
powered application design is to keep
as many modules in a low-power state
for as long as possible, occasionally
waking up to perform the required
tasks before returning to sleep mode.
In a complex design with multiple
MCU/MPUs and components, a low
pin count 8-bit microcontroller is often
used as the system supervisor, to
perform housekeeping tasks such as
turning on and off modules, as needed,
to maximize the power efficiency. Still,
the majority of designs have only one
main microcontroller with a host of
integrated peripherals to implement
the required system functions.
Therefore, the power consumption
of that microcontroller becomes a
critical parameter. However, not
all microcontrollers are made the
same when it comes to low-power
Next-gen MCUs enable better design
techniques, add functionality and use less
power
Jin Xu, Microchip Technology Inc.
18 l New-Tech Magazine Europe