If anyone wants to develop a "perpetual battery," it is likely that electronics engineers will first have to raise the efficiency of their power supply far above today's levels, but despite the massive investment made in this study, the battery has not yet come out In the real world, however, designers must do everything possible to limit power consumption, notably the Internet of Things (IoT), which, as Seshank Malap, application engineer at Tektronix, said, is driving a wave of innovation in the design and test measurement This article is a conversation with Tektronix technology experts and in the future we will share with you a series of conversations with Tektronix '
Power management is a major concern in IoT design, and accurate description of device power consumption is a basic requirement for IoT design. Tektronix eleven power analysis and measurement technologies provide you with excellent power analysis techniques to help designers determine various factors , Minimize energy consumption and optimize battery life.
• Measure wide dynamic range current signals • Determine standby current during ultra-low deep sleep • Measure output current and input current • Capture short transient signals and fast transitions
For the past six years, Malap has been working in the power supply industry, designing and testing power semiconductors, UPS systems, car chargers, and automotive motor drives. We asked him to talk about the industry changes he saw from a design and test point of view, How to play its role in the power efficiency market.
Xinlei: Why do you think Tek highly values the needs of engineers in the power industry?
Seshank: The need for more efficient people has been exponentially growing because of the ubiquity of connectivity, and as IoT emerges, more and more devices have wireless networking, a huge number of IoT sensors and devices The need to stay networked all the time to be able to collect and transmit a huge amount of data requires a significant amount of power.
The continued networking of IoT devices, coupled with the fact that most IoT devices are battery-powered, require new solutions to manage power, and power engineers need to drive extreme innovation for ultra-high power efficiency and ultra-low power consumption To maximize the use of power in the power.
Tektronix has long been a leader in the development of cutting-edge innovations that enable Tektronix innovations in this area to help engineers solve these key issues. .
Xinlei: engineers in the Internet of Things what are the challenges?
Seshank: Undoubtedly, the IoT presents a huge challenge to engineering and testing, and engineers must understand how to maximize the power of these new devices and, more importantly, how to truly test and validate the design's work in the real world. Similarly, the demand for ultra-high efficiency and small form factor in power supply designs has forced engineers to adopt ever-higher switching frequencies and smaller component packages, resulting in the development and use of high-performance, New wide bandgap switching technologies, such as silicon (SiC), enable faster switching and provide a more compact package than traditional silicon devices, while at the same time presenting a very difficult testing challenge.
In summary, these trends have greatly boosted the future of power design and are one of the key innovations in the electronics industry, and I think we will see some tremendous progress in these changes, but this requires engineers to do a great deal of work to solve The challenges we mentioned earlier, hope our test measurement colleagues can help them out in the process, at least to make their testing easier and more efficient.
Xinlei: Do you think there are any trends in this area and challenges?
Seshank: In addition to the challenges of ultra-high efficiency, smaller form factor, and ultra-low power consumption, changing regulatory standards are driving power design toward greater efficiency, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy recently introduced consumer products The energy efficiency standards set by the Sixth Grade of the State of Power (EPS) have added more energy efficiency requirements than ever before, and the EU has not to be outdone and has released the Tier 2 code of conduct on energy efficiency, which sets a stricter standard than the sixth level of the US Department of Energy Claim.
Standards bodies are pursuing higher energy efficiency, meaning more testing is required on the same type of equipment, especially power supplies, which are suitable for almost every vertical industry, so the impact is universal, and its impact is not limited to power or charging A recently introduced standard for LED drivers is driving improvements in power efficiency and electro-optical conversion efficiency.
In many ways, standards are the worst nightmare for designers, and as standards (and other codes around the world) are constantly evolving, engineers must constantly be prepared to pursue greater energy efficiency. Rising power efficiency to a new level will introduce lower standby power requirements, and in addition to being efficient at run time, the device must demonstrate that it has very low power consumption when it does nothing.
Xinlei: Do you think the test measurement in promoting innovation in this area play a role?
Seshank: In order to understand the role of test measurements, it is important to understand key trends and challenges. As mentioned earlier, achieving higher efficiencies requires a large number of innovative design approaches, one of which is to achieve higher switching frequencies. Gap power devices have become quite popular in new power electronics designs, but these devices also present their own testing challenges: on the one hand you need very high bandwidth and on the other hand you need very high sensitivity because the switches The AND gate signal becomes more critical and more sensitive.High opening frequency also requires measuring more signals simultaneously to optimize timing and duty cycle to maximize design potential.
The need for component-level testing and evaluation is also significantly enhanced in the deployment of new technologies such as GaN and SiC, which require breakdown testing of up to several thousand volts while checking for leakage currents as low as a few degrees. Deployed in a harsh design, the robust test of all these devices, from the wafer to the packaged parts, is critical.
At the system level, the need to test extremely high efficiency, design small incremental changes to meet efficiency requirements, and test accurate power consumption in all operating modes is becoming critical.
To be sure, we need to test accurately at far more test points in our system and at all stages of the design, which is much more important now than the old test tools and technologies are not enough to meet the power designers face Xinlei: can talk about new materials in detail?
Seshank: We heard a lot of news about wide bandgap devices, which are basically GaN and SiC SiC is driven by higher power requirements and thermal stability, and GaN is driven by faster rise and fall times These The trend toward switching circuitry introduces new levels of complexity requiring faster switching speeds (floating Vgs and Vds metrics need to be measured in any H-bridge topology), gate threshold voltages and timing sensitivities become higher.Furthermore, as work The frequency is high, so we need to see more signals at the same time, all of which require new test tools and new ways to optimize performance for specific applications and ensure reliability.
Xinlei: What do you think Tektronix provides for power engineers and evolutionary ways?
Seshank: Tektronix offers a complete suite of instrumentation and software solutions for power electronics design, providing full support from component testing to final product consistency testing. Tektronix touches on every aspect of optimizing power efficiency to make future designs possible. One of the key applications our company has been focusing on.
From component-level SMUs and parametric testers to source tables and spectrum analyzers for conformance testing, Tektronix provides solutions for every phase of power electronics testing.A very good example is our DMM 7510, This sampling digital multimeter can identify the lowest pA level of sleep current, while displaying up to 1MHz pulse current, engineers can easily characterize DC power profile in all working states of complex IoT sensors, and thus make the battery life to reach maximum.