2017 14th International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals & Devices (SSD)

Battery Performance and Low Power Challenges for

Standalone Mechatronic Devices
Samir Mekid* and Rifaqat Hussain**
*Meachanical Engineering Department and **Electrical Engineering Department
King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM),
Dhahran, 31261 Saudi Arabia,
e-mail:{smekid, rifaqat}@kfupm.edu.sa

Abstract—This paper investigates low power consumption in from various source e.g. vibration (piezo), solar panels, can
standalone devices and sensors that are difficult to access for take over seriously and replace the batteries.
power maintenance, using known battery types based on their
chemical composition and discusses alternative power sources e.g.
Ambient Radio Frequency (RF) harvested power than can be
directly consumed or stored in batteries. Several types of battery
technologies were tested to estimate the lifetime and the related
power thresholds needed by micro-controllers or sensor boards to
ensure proper operation over a minimum time within a network
of devices as part of the requirements. Battery characterization
of energy density, cell voltage and peak current were determined
whenever possible as key comparison in power consumption
within various power requests phases of these devices. A power
consumption budget was discussed in experimental examples
Index Terms—battery performance, analysis, different battery
technologies, RF power harvesting, experimental results.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Research and investigations in battery technology are very
dynamic and versatile worldwide. The research focus is on in-
novative batteries that would support new emerging technolo-
gies hungry in power and sometimes difficult to host standard
bulky batteries. Hence the need is not only in the required
power supply but also in the life time and the volume/shape
of the battery as many applications need tiny devices [1],
[2] operating in networks [3]. Ranging from a few milli-
ampere-hour(mAh) in capacity towards dozens of ampere-
hour(Ah), batteries can cover small to large scale applications
including cars and buildings. The market is very competitive.
Batteries are diverse in terms of technologies, properties, and
applications. Review of different types of known batteries and
its comparison upon certain types is also considered. A fair
and general comparison of batteries technologies is depicted
in Figure 1 where the most competitive technology is based
on Li-P, Li-Ion or Li/Air [4]. This was also exhibited recently
in Japan Battery Exhibition 2014.
It goes without saying that power management in a network
is of high importance especially in case of power consumption
periodical demand and power supplies shortage [5]. Any
tiny device operating in a network for condition monitoring
for example would need power to read data, process and
communicate information with peers or master node. Batteries
are made with various new materials with the objective of
reducing size, volume and weight but increasing capacity in
terms of power. The question is whether power harvesting
Figure 1. Comparison of energy densities for various chemistries.
Recent development in RF power harvesting [6] seems to
be a seamless technology but yet a couple of concerns e.g.
available RF frequencies range (915 MHz [8] for example),
harvesting time and storage have to be solved. This paper
attempts to characterize and determine batteries that will be
needed for a standalone sensor/device requiring a minimum
power capacity of 100 mAh to last for a long period e.g.
several years without recharging. A concern was raised related
to the effect of environmental conditions on the batteries, as
theoretically simple calculations would lead to several years of
battery life without any human intervention. The application
considered in this work is a smart bolt with an electronic board
to monitor the tension and sends alarm if value is less than a
set threshold. The power supply is from batteries, or, power
harvested through RF. The device is used in outdoor plants and
hence the effect of the environment may reduce the battery
lifetime tremendously with the variation of temperature (T)
and humidity (H) that are sometimes sharp during one day as
experienced in eastern province of Saudi Arabia for example.
The issues we needed to clear for a specific type of application
have been defined and investigated in this article are:

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 1) Minimum capacity required for the batteries
2) Real battery life time
3) Best technology in meeting previous specifications
4) Size of the batteries
5) Best techniques to recharge the batteries and at what
frequencies.
6) Effect of the environment e.g. T and H
7) What are the other alternatives if previous specs are met?
A couple of definitions will be introduced followed by
measurements to describe battery power consumption over
time in typical examples.
II. BATTERY C HARACTERISTICS
The electrical characteristics of a battery define how it will
perform in the circuit, and the physical properties have a large
impact on the overall size and weight of the product that it
will power. The key properties and specifications for NiMH,
NiCd, Li-Ion, Li-Poly, and NiZn are described in this part [7].
A. Energy Density
The energy density of a battery measures the ratio between
the energy of a battery with respect to its weight or to its
volume, usually in Watt-hours/kilogram (Joule/kg), or Watt-
hours/liter (W-hr/l).
B. Cell Voltage/Voltage Stability
The voltage rating rating with given as battery capacity in
mAh.
C. Peak Current
The maximum current that a battery can deliver is directly
dependent on the internal equivalent series resistance (ESR)
of the battery.
D. Self Discharge
Self-discharge occurs in all types of batteries, it determines
the ”shelf life” of a battery. Self-discharge rates for the
different battery chemistries are different, exact values may
vary with manufacturer and depend on temperature.
E. Recharge Time
The amount of time that the typical consumer finds ac-
ceptable for battery recharging is desirable and of interest.
It depends on the type of item being powered.
F. Slow charging
Slow charge is defined as a charging current that can be
safely applied to a battery indefinitely without any kind of
monitoring or charge termination method referred as trickle
charging.
G. Fast charging
Fast charge requires more complex charging circuitry and
thus raising the system cost but gives the customer faster
charging time which is a very attractive selling point.
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H. Operating Temperature
Batteries are acutely sensitive to operating temperature
with respect to their charging characteristics and ampere-hour
(AH) capacity. Most well designed chargers have temperature
sensors to assure that the battery temperature is within the
allowable window for charging.
III. P OWER H ARVESTING
Harvesting power for ambient RF energy is certainly a free
energy that everyone is looking forward to acquire and use.
However, the harvested power is in the range of fraction of
mille-Watts in Figure 2. This is not a lost case since many
low power wireless networks exist and within the current on
the applications progress, the authors are considering there is
room to use very low power to transmit data once a day only
for example. In the current application a network of smart
bolts, is regularly monitoring the tension of all the bolts in
a star network for example. In this set-up power harvested
and power by direct power, supply could be used to send data
once a day from each bolt in a cluster. Harvested power could
be stored in rechargeable batteries to transmit data. For both
cases, power optimization depending on the packets to be sent
and scenarios to be implemented in synchronization between
bolts becomes necessary. The power supplied can have two
sources:
1) Harvested power from known specific emitter at
915MHz, for example, delivering around 3.5 V where
the emitter is also consuming power from AC power
supply, or
2) Harvested power for open ambient frequency range. In
this case although the efficiency is very low while it is
still sufficient to send a packet per day from each node.
Figure 2. Power harvested from ambient RF.
Hence, since the emitter is probably consuming a high
energy compared to the network in place, it is then worth
including it in the optimization process [8]. This is to ensure
that the emitter is ON only when it is needed. In this work,
the assigned task was to test the different types of batteries
available. This task may be divided into different stages. These
may include:
1) Review of different Battery Technologies.
 2) Working with Labjack data acquisition system.
3) Batteries analysis and determination of discharging char-
acteristics parameters.

IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS

To investigate discharging characteristics of different battery

technologies, a set of tests were carried out using more
accurate specialized data acquisition platform i.e. Labjack U3.
The voltage of each battery is similar to the voltage of resistor
R as both are in parallel. The Labjack was subject to measure
this voltage over time in order to determine the discharging
characteristics of each battery technology. Once all batteries
have tested to complete power drain, a test table was completed
and shown for each type of battery in Table A in Appendix.
Results for each cell test include the following parameters:
1) Voltage curve
2) Current curve
3) Power curve
4) Measured Weight
5) Measured capacity
6) Specific energy
7) Open circuit voltage
8) Internal resistance
The only directly measured parameter is the voltage and
all other parameters are calculated by considering the testing
circuit and the rated cell parameters. A Matlab code was
generated to take these values and hence produce all the
calculated results for any given cell.
A. Test Environment and Some Precautions
At this point, all the testing procedures were identified,
which will leave the rest of the work to deal with the testing
of other cells to complete the testing table. Labjack is a very
powerful, yet user-friendly data acquisition device that should
be able to complete these tests problem free. Very simple tools
are needed in these experiments to setup the circuit; therefore,
the probability of hardware man-made mistakes is minimized.
Cells should not be subjected to the discharge test directly
after charging, it should be given some time ( 1 hr) to give a
chance for its chemistry to stabilize before discharging. Tests
should be performed in a low humidity and room temperature
Figure 3. Simple resistive circuit for battery discharge
2) Current Characteristic Curves: For each type of bat-
tery, the current flowing in the circuit is shown by current
characteristic curve. This current is calculated using voltage
characteristic curves.
3) Power Characteristic Curves: Power characteristics
curves are of three types. These curves are derived using the
circuit parameter, like resistor R, internal resistor Rin and
current, I flowing in the circuit.
• Power dissipated inside each battery
• Power dissipated across resistor R
• Total power dissipated
C. Threshold Values of Power Needed by Device
It was intended to identify the capacity of different sets of
batteries for given real devices such as microcontroller or any
other complete circuit. The current is the basic requirement
for any circuit to operate. If the current falls below certain
value or threshold, the circuit would not work. The reason is
that the circuit cannot draw sufficient current from the source
or the source cannot provide the sufficient current for the
proper operation and hence stop working. A set of various
types of batteries have been considered in Figs 4 and 5 to
show how voltage and power behave over time when the
batteries are supplying power. There is a minimum threshold
after which the power is not sufficient anymore.

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1) Voltage Characteristic Curves: For any type of battery, 

discharging characteristic curve is mainly the voltage curve
directly measured using a Labjack as shown in Figure 3. The 
      
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Figure 5. Power Characteristics curves for different batteries technologies.
Example: Find the capacity percentage of NiMH for the
circuit drawing constant current of 60mA. The circuit would
stop working when voltage falls below 2.6V.
Solution: To provide proper voltage to this circuit, we will
use three batteries of NiMH. The circuit will draw 60mA of
constant current. We drew the discharging curves of NiMH
battery across a simple resistive circuit. We will use those
characteristics and apply them to the current example.
-Initial ideal voltage for 3 cells = 3.6 V
-Minimum voltage = 2.6 V
-Current flowing in the circuit = 60mA
-Minimum voltage of each cell before threshold = 0.866V
-% battery rating for single cell = 88%. We are calculating
w.r.t 0.866V)
-Calculated capacity of 3 batteries = 6468 mAh
-Total Time for which the battery could supply current to the
circuit = 6468/60 = 107.8 Hours
Based on this test, we have calculated the threshold values
of all other type of batteries and built Table 1 that shows the
time estimation of discharge of each type of battery based on
the threshold values used in this section.
Table I
BATTERY L IFE .
V. P OWER C ONSUMPTION AND BATTERY L IFE
The power consumption is the core criteria in assessing
the success for the application of long life standalone sensor
nodes. Therefore, it is actually important to exert all the
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saved. In this section, the analysis is performed for smart bolt
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1L0+(QORRS troller board, an instrumentation board and an optional power
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harvesting board. Table 2 shows the power consumption of
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1L0+6DQ\R the microcontroller board and the instrumentation board as
obtained by the measurements tests. Table 2 shows that the
power consumption of the main board is dominated by the
  
power spent during sleep modes. This result triggered the
attempt to reduce this number in Phase 2. The other major
result is the large power consumed by the instrumentation
board because of the request for stability that led to the usage
of voltage regulators powering the resistor bridge. This result
blocks the feasibility of a solution as the battery life is less than
a day with a state-of-the-art 500 mAh battery. Reducing the
power consumption of the instrumentation board was carried
out in the Phase 2 revision where analog switches were used
to completely power-off the board when not in use. It is only
powered-on during the time of collecting measurements data.
B. Phase 2 Power Consumption
The power consumed during sleep mode by the main board
is the largest part of the power and accounts for more than
99.95 % of the total power consumed by the board. Therefore,
reducing this power will increase the battery life. Typically,
using an RTC to reboot the microcontroller through an analog
switch is supposed to save power as the RTC consumes less
than 500 nA during sleep mode. However, it is clear that the
use of the RTC alongside an analog switch will not necessarily
reduce the power consumption, as the power of the analog
switch is not accounted for. Moreover, sleep mode allows
data retention in the memories of the microcontroller, which
implies that powering it off will require an external non-
volatile memory to save the application firmware context. The
use of an EEPROM is generally the most common solution.
The read/write to the EEPROM consumes power as well and
takes actually more time.
This directly points to the need for completing a thorough
set of measurements to get a clear picture of the power
consumption in the main microcontroller board. For the in-
strumentation board, the use of analog switches posed the
issue of stabilization time for the instrumentation amplifier.
The question is: what is the minimum required time to perform
one measurement correctly. Measurements have shown that a
minimum of 5 ms are required to have the instrumentation
amplifier stable enough to deliver a stable and meaningful
output. This duration is further reduced by isolating the largest
power consuming component of the instrumentation board,
the resistor bridge. Measurements have also shown that a
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 Table II
P OWER C ONSUMPTION OF P HASE 1 B OARDS . bolt tension monitoring, is shown in Fig. 9 where deep sleep
can be implemented in A while high consumption is observed
in wireless communication in D.

Table III
P OWER C ONSUMPTION OF P HASE 2 B OARDS .

Figure 6. Setup used for battery discharge.

minimum of 1 ms is required for the resistor bridge to be

on before the instrumentation amplifier can deliver a stable
output. Another analog switch is therefore introduced to allow
the individual control of the power for different blocks on the
instrumentation board. The power consumed in the resistor
bridge amount a total of 28 mA which is a very significant Figure 7. Lithium battery discharge.
savings. Table 3 shows the projected power consumption
numbers obtained from the microcontroller board and the
instrumentation board as obtained by the measurements tests:
• The total power is then for a single cycle period e.g. 24
hours: 9.640 x 10-3 mAh. The battery life for such a
system and for different battery capacities is given Table
3.
• The obtained figures clearly show that the battery life is
not an issue as the actual MTBF of any battery is much
lower than the projected life especially in a severe outdoor
environment.

VI. D ISCHARGE P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS

Testing battery discharge time was carried out on two
batteries types i.e. Alkaline and Lithium using set-up shown
in Figure 6 in indoor. Battery voltage is read and saved in
the microcontroller EEPROM every 2 hours. Collected data
is collected manually through USB interface. The discharge
behavior of both batteries shown in Figs 7 and 8 show that
lithium battery lasts much longer than alkaline battery over a
significant time considered of 1440 hours. There is a power
drop in Alkaline battery (Fig. 8) compared to constant power in
Lithium battery (Fig. 7). Over the tested period, the voltage of
the Lithium battery remains higher than the Alkaline. Typical
power consumption for a standalone device i.e. smart bolt with
Figure 8. Alkaline battery discharge.
VII. C ONCLUSIONS
Performance evaluations of different battery technologies
were performed in this paper in order to analyze the power
consumption of each category and to find out how it can meet
the power requirement e.g. lifetime and minimum threshold,
of standalone devices that are positioned in difficult to access
areas. These technologies include NiMH, NiCd, Li-Ion, Li-
Poly, and NiZn. Power consumption is one of the critical

503
 [8] U. Baroudi, A. Al-Roubaiey, S. Mekid, and A. Bouhraoua, “Delay charac-
terization and performance evaluation of cluster-based wsn with different
deployment distributions,” Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 39,
pp. 100–110, 2014.

A PPENDIX

Table A
D ISCHARGING C HARACTERISTICS OF ALL BATTERIES TESTED IN THIS
WORK .

Figure 9. Typical power consumption in a system.

criteria for any mechatronic device operating in a standalone

mode. Battery selection from above is important but also cir-
cuit designs tracks to reduce power consumption is important.
The best-observed scheme to save power is to go deep sleep
and wake up for the assigned task with short communication if
needed as alarms. Power harvesting from ambient environment
could be an excellent solution to standard batteries powering
electronics especially for difficult to reach bolts. But the
drawback is the limited distance between the emitter and the
bolts to ensure frequency with 850-950 MHz. Relaying this to
pure ambient RF without the emitter could sometimes work
depending on the spectrogram of ambient RF power of that
location. This may not be reliable to systematically power up
the bolts from ambient RF, hence dedicated power source with
corresponding frequency range is more reliable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided
by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST)
through King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
(KFUPM) for funding this project No.09ELE758-04 as part
of the National Science Technology and Innovation Plan

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