When a wireless sensor node has to run with batteries for months it is really important to know which is the average power consumption. Standard AA batteries have about 2000 mAh (they can supply 1 mA for 2000 hours), msp430 (which maybe is the 16 bit microcontroller with lower power consumption) can draw from 0,3 uA in sleep mode to 4 mA in active mode, a radio chip like CC2420 draws about 20 mA in Transmition or Reception, reading from any kind of sensors could up to 6 mA. The worst case would be a power consumption of 30 mA, that will draw the entire battery in about 72 hours. That’s not good. It is mandatory to have an inteligent operating system adaptation that really manages power consumption and starts and stops devices only when needed. But is also really important, when prototyping a wireless sensing application to know exactly how much power will it draw. This is why at dexma we have developped DXNRG, used with dexCell framework, will help integrators to fine tune the application and optimize battery life. DXNRG is fully integrated in dexCell Stack, it takes care of how much time each device is used, information can be sent over the network or over the serial port. Using dexCell Server integration, it is really easy to know which is the average power comsumption of your applications, and predict in a more effective way batteries life.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ category
When energy matters
July 8th, 2008Active RFID and Sensor Networks
October 26th, 2007from IDTechEx
Active RFID, where a battery drives the tag, is responsible for an increasing percentage of the money spent in the RFID market. It will rise from 12.7% of the total RFID market this year to 26.3% in 2017, meaning a huge $7.07 billion market. If we include the market for cell phone RFID modules (another form of active RFID), the market is an additional $0.44 billion in 2007 and $1.2 billion in 2017.
Analysis of 75 case studies
In the analysis of 75 active RFID case studies from 18 countries, the largest number of projects has been in Logistics with around double the number for each of the nearest contenders – Air Industry, Automotive/Transportation and Healthcare. Added to those as important sectors will be such things as safety of constructions and people monitoring. Meanwhile, RTLS is being put in about 50 hospitals yearly, for staff, patients and assets. In the case studies, the items that are tagged were mainly containers, followed by vehicles, conveyances and people.
Applications of Active RFID by market vertical 2007-2011
